A new fusion-edge sealed vacuum for concentrated photovoltaic/thermal solar collector in comparison to a conventional system

Abstract

Any heat harvesting system experiences high heat loss to the ambient. Hence, using matured insulation such as vacuum insulation to control any thermal heat leakage is highly required. In the current research investigation, a novel hybrid new fusion-edge sealed vacuum concentrated so-called VCPV/T system. The new design of a vacuum insulated layer is employed to reduce the thermal losses and improve the overall electrical, thermal, and exergy performance of a concentrated photovoltaic solar thermal collector (CPV/T). A comprehensive 3D conjugate heat transfer model is developed, validated with mesh independent tests for both CPV/T and VCPV/T at Re of 75 to achieve the higher precision of results in numerical simulations. The results show in the new VCPV/T the percentage rise in the maximum cell temperature between both systems achieved to be 1.0%, 1.7%, and 2.16% at three different concentration ratios ( CR ) of 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The results of VCPV/T implicate a sensible enhancement in the overall performance compared to the conventional CPV/. For, CR = 3, the maximum thermal, electrical, and total exergy predicted to be 144.5 W, 33 W, and 177.6 W all around 13:00 h for new VCPV/T systems, respectively. At CR = 3, about 14% and 10.7% enhancement in thermal and total exergy, respectively.