Numerical analyses of hybrid jet impingement/microchannel cooling device for thermal management of high concentrator triple-junction solar cell

摘要

An efficient cooling arrangement is mandatory to achieve a higher net output power from the high concentrator photovoltaic structures in addition to extending their lifetime. In the current study, five new heat sink designs for a jet impingement/microchannel hybrid cooling scheme were investigated and compared with a conventional jet impingement cooling scheme. These designs consisted of an arrangement of rectangular fins at the streamwise length of the heat sink. This resulted in a stepwise decrease in the corresponding channel width and hydraulic diameter. A comprehensive three-dimensional thermal and structure model was developed to investigate the capability of the proposed designs in terms of reduction of the cell temperature besides enhancement of the temperature uniformity. Based on the results, the hybrid cooling scheme exhibited promising cooling ability compared to the conventional jet impingement scheme. The results of the present study show that the hybrid cooling scheme is effective cooling system and it achieved the utmost possible reduction of solar cell temperature, under high solar concentration ratio of 1000 suns where the solar cell temperature reduces to 55 degrees C. When the inlet mass flow rate was increased to 50 g/min under the same conditions, a corresponding reduction in the cell temperature from 67.3 to 55 degrees C was observed for Case 4 of the hybrid scheme designs. In addition, there was a decrease from 82.3 to 63.2 degrees C for Case 1 of the conventional jet impingement heat sink (HS). Under the hybrid cooling scheme, the electrical efficiency of the cell improved to 39.7% when the inlet mass flow rate was equal to 50 g/min for Case 4. Exergy analysis revealed that the hybrid scheme achieved an overall exergy efficiency of 53.5% at inlet mass flow rate of 25 g/min.