Spectral Beam Splitting in Compound Parabolic Collector Based Photovoltaic Thermal System
Abstract
Spectral beam splitting (SBS) is an approach to eliminate the interdependency between photovoltaic (PV) and photothermal conversion processes in a conventional photovoltaic thermal (PVT) system. Hence, it overcomes the major shortcoming of a traditional PVT system, which is the extraction of low-temperature thermal output as it is limited by the peak operational temperature attained by the PV cells/module. The present work conceptualizes a novel compound parabolic collector (CPC)-based concentrating PVT system utilizing a nanofluid optical filter for SBS. A Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (MCRT) based optical analysis of the devised system is carried out to determine the incident heat flux. Further, the cell temperature associated with the incident flux is determined. A five-parameter model is used to quantify the system's electrical performance in relation to the incident solar radiation and corresponding cell temperature. The suggested system is compared to a typical stand-alone photovoltaic array in terms of thermal and electrical yield.