Electricity enhancement and thermal energy production from concentrated photovoltaic integrated with a 3-layered stacked micro-channel heat sink

Abstract

The thermal effectiveness of three types of heat sink hsssas been investigated experimentally using a flexible kapton heater to simulate the generated heat from a CPV system for various heating loads. The three heat sinks are an air cooled flat aluminum heat sink, an air cooled finned aluminum heat sink and a water cooled 3-layered stacked micro-channel heat sink. It is shown that the temperature of the heater surface is reduced dramatically by using the finned heat sink compared to the flat plate heat sink. Also, the 3-layered stacked micro-channel heat sink is able to reduce the heater surface temperature below 50°C for 5.5W heater power. The work also studies numerically the effect of the 3-layered stacked micro-channel heat sink in a single solar cell receiver for a 500× concentration in enhancing the solar cell electrical efficiency and production of the thermal energy. The study uses a three dimensional modelling approach for real weather conditions. The results show a high solar cell electricity performance.