Abstract
Thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems convert heat into electricity by thermally radiating heat onto a photovoltaic (PV) diode array. They have potential applications as TPV combined heat and power (CHP) generation units, with radiator based on SiC or Yb2O3 and considering as a heat source a combustion flame. Small area PV cells can be used in order to reduce the system costs, and the use of some specials mirrors for radiation focusing onto photocells became necessary. Unfortunately, if the intensity of the radiation focused by mirrors becomes too high, the PV cells can overheat and degrade. In this paper, it was developed a basic TPV model using commercial Finite Element Method (FEM) package Comsol Multiphysics (version 5.0). The lengths of the mirrors and of the photocells were optimized by selecting a geometrical model having the optimal operating temperature low enough to ensure a reduced temperature gradient in the vicinity of the mirrors. The optimal mirror length lm was selected from three different values of 8, 10 and 12 mm by computing the electrical output power at various emitter temperatures, surface radiosity and surface irradiation along one quarter of device circumference, 2D temperature map in a region with two adjacent mirrors and one PV cell for a constant photovoltaic cell length lpv = 10 mm.
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