Performance evaluation of a natural convective-cooled concentration solar thermoelectric generator coupled with a spectrally selective high temperature absorber coating

Candadai, Aaditya A.; Kumar, Vijay; Barshilia, Harish C.

doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2015.10.040

Cited by 53 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Although few works demonstrated the thermally stable solar absorber by measuring the emittance and absorptance before and after the annealing process, [28][29][30] they did not directly measure the temperature-dependent optical properties at high temperatures. In addition, Candadia et al [ 32 ] achieved 96% of solar absorptance using a wavelength-selective coating. Their fabricated method was wet etching and electroplating process, which is powerful to make an anti-refl ection coating, such as moth-eye structures through a simple and cheap process.…”

Section: Full Paper Full Paper Full Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadband Solar Thermal Absorber Based on Optical Metamaterials for High‐Temperature Applications

Han

Shin

Jung

et al. 2016

Advanced Optical Materials

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ible and near-infrared (IR) spectral region is critically important. On the other hand, in the mid-IR spectral region, surface emittance should be lowered in order to minimize the radiation loss in the form of thermal emission for high-temperature applications, such as concentrated solar tower. Therefore, wavelength-selective coatings are often applied to spectrally tune the optical property of the collector surface. [ 2 ] Recently, optical metamaterials have drawn much attention due to potential applications in thermophotovoltaic energy conversion, [ 3 ] solar cell, [ 4,5 ] solar thermal application, [ 6 ] and plasmonic sensors. [ 7 ] Regarding solar thermal applications, achieving perfect absorption in the visible and near-IR spectral region would be of great interest. For example, split-ring resonators, [ 8,9 ] 1D grating structures, [ 10,11 ] and cross-shape grating structures [ 12 ] were proposed to achieve perfect absorption. However, these studies showed only narrowband absorption; thus, their applicability as a solar thermal absorber is hardly possible. In order to achieve broadband absorption, various types of structures were proposed, such as photonic crystals, [ 13,14 ] nanowire and nanohole arrays, [ 15 ] and nanowire forests. [ 16 ] Alternatively, geometric combination of gratings can also attain a broadband absorption. For example, Yang et al. [ 17 ] investigated the resistor mounted crosswire and split-ring-resonator structure for the broadband and polarization-insensitive absorber in gigahertz frequency regime. In the visible and near-IR spectral region, Wang and Wang [ 18 ] showed that the metamaterial structure composed of two different-sized grating elements within one period on top of SiO 2 spacer and tungsten substrate can exhibit broadband absorption. In addition, saw-tooth [ 19,20 ] and pyramidal [ 21,22 ] shaped structures also demonstrated ultrabroadband absorption. Although several other techniques, such as a microencapsulation of phase change material, [ 23 ] a quasi-periodic nanocone, [ 24 ] a fi lm coupled nanoparticle, [ 25 ] and graphene nanodisc, [ 26 ] have been proposed for achieving broadband absorption, most of the structures are too complicated to be fabricated for real-world applications. In order to overcome the fabrication diffi culty, a relatively simpler type of tandem grating structure was proposed for demonstrating broadband absorption in the visible spectrum by exciting coupled surface plasmon and magnetic resonance; [ 27 ] however, experimental demonstration has not been made yet. It should be also noted that the temperature-dependent radiative properties In this work, a tandem grating solar absorber is proposed, which can be easily fabricated on a wafer scale and is thermally stable up to 800 K. The base of the solar thermal absorber consists of a tungsten substrate, SiO 2 spacer, and 2D tungsten nanohole array fi lled with SiO 2 . On top of the base structure, a 2D tungsten nanodisc array is coated with an additional SiO 2 spacer, forming the tandem grating structur...

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Section: Full Paper Full Paper Full Papermentioning

confidence: 99%

Broadband Solar Thermal Absorber Based on Optical Metamaterials for High‐Temperature Applications

Han

Shin

Jung

et al. 2016

Advanced Optical Materials

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“…In [ 21 ], the effectiveness of a high-temperature spectrally selective absorber and its performance on thermoelectric power generation under a high optical concentration ratio was demonstrated. The proposed solar absorber was attached to a stack of three TEGs connected in series.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was placed under a Fresnel lens that can provide an optical concentration ratio of 62. The solar-to-electrical conversion efficiency was 1.2%, achieved with a temperature of 280 °C at the TEG’s hot side at an input solar flux of 845 W· m

under matched load condition [ 21 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Thermoelectric Energy Harvester Based on Microstructured Quasicrystalline Solar Absorber

et al. 2021

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As solar radiation is the most plentiful energy source on earth, thermoelectric energy harvesting emerges as an interesting solution for the Internet of Things (IoTs) in outdoor applications, particularly using semiconductor thermoelectric generators (TEGs) to power IoT devices. However, when a TEG is under solar radiation, the temperature gradient through TEG is minor, meaning that the TEG is useless. A method to keep a significant temperature gradient on a TEG is by using a solar absorber on one side for heating and a heat sink on the other side. In this paper, a compact TEG-based energy harvester that features a solar absorber based on a new class of solid matter, the so-called quasicrystal (QC), is presented. In addition, a water-cooled heat sink to improve the temperature gradient on the TEG is also proposed. The harvester is connected to a power management circuit that can provide an output voltage of 3 V and store up to 1.38 J in a supercapacitor per day. An experimental evaluation was carried out to compare the performance of the proposed QC-based harvester with another similar harvester but with a solar absorber based on conventional black paint. As a result, the QC-based harvester achieved 28.6% more efficient energy generation and achieved full charge of a supercapacitor around two hours earlier. At last, a study on how much the harvested energy can supply power to a sensor node for Smart agriculture during a day while considering a trade-off between the maximum number of measurements and the maximum number of transmission per day is presented.

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“…As a common PV cell converts a large amount of solar irradiant energy into heat, a hybrid PV cell and TE device (PVTE) may be a prospective way to improve the overall efficiency of solar energy [7]. One form of PVTE systems uses the socalled spectrum splitting concentrating system, where the photons with an energy out of the PV working waveband are incident to the TE devices, generating thereby electricity via the thermoelectric effect [8][9][10]. This system is complex and the heat produced from the PV is still not used.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The thermoelectric transport properties are derived by means of a new extended irreversible thermodynamic (EIT) model [5,13,14]. The optimization of the overall efficiency of cooled PVTE systems is quite complicated and many works have investigated this mostly by experiments [15][16][17][18] or by numerical methods [7,8,9], to mention a few. Hereby, it appeared that working at nanoscale lengths the efficiency could be increased [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancement of a photovoltaic cell performance by a coupled cooled nanocomposite thermoelectric hybrid system, using extended thermodynamics

Machrafi

2017

Current Applied Physics

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A new analytical mathematical model is developed, describing a cooled photovoltaicthermoelectric hybrid system. The thermoelectric material is a nanocomposite where the model takes into account size-dependent non-local thermoelectric properties from an extended thermodynamic point of view. The photovoltaic device powers also the cooling system. The model determines first the optimum thickness of the photovoltaic device, then studies the influence of several size-related parameters on the thermoelectric efficiency (also related to the figure of merit) and finally, coupled to a cooling device, the overall efficiency. For the photovoltaic part, the model is applied to two materials, mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline silicon. The thermoelectric part of the model is applied to an n-leg nanocomposite made out of Sb2Te3 nanoparticles in a Bi2Te3 matrix and of a p-leg nanocomposite made out of Bi2Se3 nanoparticles in a Bi2Te3 matrix. An optimal total photovoltaic device size has been found to be around 127 µm and 1.25 µm for the mono-and poly-crystalline silicon, respectively, leading to efficiencies up to 20 %, depending on photovoltaic recombination characteristics. With the cooling device, the overall efficiency was increased by up to an additional 10 % (an increase of almost 50 %), leading to overall efficiencies around 25 %. IntroductionDevelopments in renewable energy seek to alleviate the global energy crisis and reduce its impact on the environment. One way is to use solar energy. By means of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells, photonic energy is mainly converted into electricity and waste heat. PV cells have relatively low conversion efficiency, because they can only utilize part of the incident solar energy due to its given bandgap, and require often hybrid configurations [1]. One way to increase the efficiency of PV cells is using thermal management by means of heat sinks [2]. Otherwise, the waste heat can be used in order to be converted to more electricity via thermoelectric devices (TE) [3][4][5][6]. As a common PV cell converts a large amount of solar irradiant energy into heat, a hybrid PV cell and TE device (PVTE) may be a prospective way to improve the overall efficiency of solar energy [7]. One form of PVTE systems uses the socalled spectrum splitting concentrating system, where the photons with an energy out of the PV working waveband are incident to the TE devices, generating thereby electricity via the thermoelectric effect [8][9][10]. This system is complex and the heat produced from the PV is still not used. Connecting the TE device directly at the dark side of the PV cell is simpler and theoretically all thermal energy can be used by the TE device [11], of which the efficiency can be even increased by cooling the TE device [7,12]. It is the latter hybrid system that we consider in this work. As the efficiency in TE devices are proportional (though not necessarily linearly) on mainly the temperature difference across the device and the figure of merit, both are to be increased. The temper...

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Performance evaluation of a natural convective-cooled concentration solar thermoelectric generator coupled with a spectrally selective high temperature absorber coating

Cited by 53 publications

References 23 publications

Broadband Solar Thermal Absorber Based on Optical Metamaterials for High‐Temperature Applications

Broadband Solar Thermal Absorber Based on Optical Metamaterials for High‐Temperature Applications

A Thermoelectric Energy Harvester Based on Microstructured Quasicrystalline Solar Absorber

Enhancement of a photovoltaic cell performance by a coupled cooled nanocomposite thermoelectric hybrid system, using extended thermodynamics

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