Design and Three-Dimensional Simulation of a Solar Dish-Stirling Engine

Abstract

Design and three-dimensional simulation of a solar Dish-Stirling (SDS) engine is currently performed. The design starts with the GPU-3 Stirling engine, which is originally built to generate power from the fossil fuel exclusively. The design is conducted through three subsequent phases. Firstly, several parabolic dishes with different rim angles and number of facets are investigated to optimally design the dish concentrator. Secondly, different relative positions of the receiver aperture to the dish focal plane are tested to reach the optimal position. The optical simulation of the solar concentration process is carried out using SolTRACE software. Finally, an optimal design for a cavity receiver that involves a new structure of the heater tubes is performed. The simulation of the engine with the designed receiver is implemented using the commercial CFD code ANSYS FLUENT. Having finished the design, a comprehensive energy analysis of the designed SDS engine is carried out. The results show that a nearly uniform temperature distribution of the heater tubes throughout the cycle is achieved. The overall thermal efficiency of the designed SDS engine is about 31.8 % at a DNI of 1000 W/m2.

Simulation of Low Voltage DC-DC Booster Circuit with Improved Switch for Amplification of Biophotovoltaic Cell Output Voltage

“…We also note that for each simulation, the input power is set to 0.4 mW. This is done to model a 1m 2 BPV cell as the input to our circuit. The internal series resistance of the voltage source in the simulation is set to 1  in order to model the internal resistance of the BPV cell.…”

“…Renewable energy sources today come mainly from wind and solar energy [1][2][3]. Biophotovoltaic (BPV) cells convert light energy into usable electrical energy by harvesting photo electrons excreted as by products from the photosynthetic activities of cyanobacteria and microalgae.…”