Abstract—The major issue related to the passive air cooling technology for high concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) module is that their heat dissipation efficiencies highly rely on the ambient temperature and wind speed. It may not provide enough cooling for solar cells causing the malfunction of HCPV module under the worst case scenario, i.e., high ambient temperature and no wind condition. In this study, a novel passive air cooling device, named as Solar Enhanced Passive Air Cooling System (SEPACS), was proposed. To verify its performance advantage over conventional aluminum plate heat sink, a three dimensional model was developed in the CFD software. Numerical comparative analysis shows that the SEPACS can keep cell temperature under 75oC when the concentration ratio reaches to 700, while solar cells cooled by conventional aluminum plate heat sink would be overheated at same concentration ratio.
Index Terms—HCPV, passive air cooling, solar chimney.
The authors are with the Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing, 400054 China (e-mail: z.zou@cqut.edu.cn, gonghx@cqut.edu.cn, donotwang@163.com, 897938181@qq.com).
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Cite:Zheng Zou, Hengxiang Gong, Jingshu Wang, and Shilie Xie, "Numerical Investigation of Solar Enhanced Passive Air Cooling System for Concentration Photovoltaic Module Heat Dissipation," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 206-211, 2017.
