Abstract
It is necessary to control the temperature of solar cells for enhancing efficiency with increasing concentrations of multiple photovoltaic systems. A heterogeneous two-phase model was established after considering the interacting between temperature, viscosity, the flow of nanofluid, and the motion of nanoparticles in the nanofluid, in order to study the microchannel heat sink (MCHS) using Al2O3-water nanofluid as coolant in the photovoltaic system. Numerical simulations were carried out to investigate the thermal performance of MCHS with a series of trapezoidal grooves. The numerical results showed us that, (1) better thermal performance of MCSH using nanofluid can be achieved from a heterogeneous two-phase model than that from single-phase model; (2) The effects of flow field, volume fraction, nanoparticle size on the heat transfer enhancement in MCHS were interpreted by a non-dimensional parameter NBT (i.e., ratio of Brownian diffusion and thermophoretic diffusion). In addition, the geometrical parameters of MCHS and the physical parameters of the nanofluid were optimized. This can provide a sound foundation for the design of MCHS.
Highlights
With the rapid increase of concentrated multiples in the photovoltaic system, to improve the efficiency of solar cell is an issue of concern
It is known to all that Brownian motion and thermophoresis of nanoparticles in nanofluid are two two most important mechanisms to enhance heat transfer
Aiming at the microchannel heat sink (MCHS) used in micro solar cell, a numerical model for coupling calculation was Aiming at theonMCHS
Summary
With the rapid increase of concentrated multiples in the photovoltaic system, to improve the efficiency of solar cell is an issue of concern. A variety of approaches are utilized to cool the solar cell, the most frequently used are jet-impact cooling and microchannel heat sink (MCHS) [5,6,7,8]. Great interests were aroused by the excellent heat transfer performance of MCHS [9,10,11,12,13,14]. The use of nanofluid as a coolant can further promote the heat transfer performance of MCHS [15,16,17,18]. Most research work has focused on the MCHS layout, geometrical parameters of microchannel, and so on. Osman et al [19] investigated the influence of the layout and arrangement of microchannels on thermal performance. Gunnasegaran [20] studied the thermal performance of various MCHS with various cross-section (rectangle, trapezoidal, circle, and ellipse)
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