Evaluation of the emitter structure and temperature effect on a thermophotovoltaic system with an optimal cavity

Abstract

Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems convert thermal energy to electrical power. In this paper, a TPV system with an optimal cavity which has three identical photovoltaic arrays and contains InGaAsSb cells considered as reference system. TracePro used to obtain the irradiance density on the surface of PV cells in TPV systems and then electrical parameters calculated using MATLAB. Short-circuit current (Isc) and open-circuit voltage (Voc) for each array are 4.39 A and 49.19 V, respectively. The whole system generates 433.2 W power with an efficiency of 10.91%. Some cases with various conditions based on the reference model are considered to evaluate the emitter structure and temperature’s effect on the TPV system. In the reference system, by changing the cylindrical emitter to a three-sided emitter, the system efficiency increased to 14.33%. Besides, the three arrays containing the InGaAs cells are used as the second layer in the reference system. In this regard, the measured characteristics for the second layer are 1.15 A for Isc and 46.58 V for Voc, respectively. The second layer generated 35.96 W power and demonstrated an increased efficiency of 2.71%, meaning 13.63% efficiency for the whole system. Moreover, system performance at different temperatures for the emitter is investigated. For the lowest emitter temperature (i.e. 1000 K) the Isc = 1.46 A, Voc = 41.14 V, 108.18 W total output power and the 6.96% system efficiency are obtained. While for the highest temperature (i.e. 1900 K) the electrical characteristics for each array are Isc = 10.56 A and Voc = 54.35 V with a total generated power of 911.91 W and the efficiency is 12.36%.