Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Teaching Assistant, Department of Mechanical Power Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at El-Mattaria, Helwan University, Masaken El-Helmia P.O., Cairo 11718, Egypt.
2
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Power Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at El-Mattaria, Helwan University, Masaken El-Helmia P.O., Cairo 11718, Egypt.
3
Professor, Department of Mechanical Power Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at ElMattaria, Helwan University, Masaken El-Helmia P.O., Cairo 11718, Egypt.
Abstract
Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) is an alternative technique used to convert the
solar energy to electrical energy. CPV is used in lieu of the photovoltaic system
(PV) due to its smaller semiconductor area and consequently lower cost. The
study of fluid flow and thermal characteristics for a CPV integrated with a three
dimensional (3D) rectangular shaped microchannel heat sink (MCHS) is
numerically investigated. Laminar and steady flow of water as a coolant is used at
the present study. The flow and thermal fields are analyzed using four channel
number (N) (26, 52, 78 and 104), concentration ratio (CR) from 1 to 20 and
Reynolds number (Re) from 100 to 1000. The evaluating parameters such as
temperature, the electrical efficiency and the electrical power are obtained from
the simulation. Results show that increasing the channel number over N equals 52
leads to a slight decrease in the cell temperature while the design of 26 channels
achieves less cell temperature. As the concentration ratio increases, the cell
efficiency decreases due to increase of the temperature while the electrical power
increases. Increasing Re provides a negligible enhancement in the cell efficiency
and consequently a slight increase in the electric power.
Keywords
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