Assessment of Concentrated Photovoltaic Thermal (CPVT) Systems Using CFD Analysis

- Concentrated Photovoltaic Thermal (CPVT) systems play an important role in solar system development, reducing dependency on fossil fuels and meeting global energy demand. This research investigates the CPVT model, which uses point-focus Fresnel lenses (PFFL) to amplify a significant amount of irradiance and focus it on photovoltaic surfaces to simultaneously produce electrical and thermal energy. The proposed model has Multi-Junction Photovoltaic (MJPV) solar cells, PFFL, copper heat sinks, and a copper cooling pipe. A numerical model was developed to investigate and evaluate the thermal and electrical performance of the proposed model under various input and output parameters. The numerical model has been first validated and then used to simulate the impact of the concentration ratio (CR), Heat transfer fluid (HTF) flow rates, HTF inlet temperature, incident radiation, and the optical efficiency of the Fresnel lens on the HTF outlet temperature, MJPV cell temperature, and thermal and electrical efficiency. The CFD model's minimum and maximum thermal output efficiencies were around 59.5% and 85.3%, respectively. The highest electrical efficiency occurred at a mass flow rate of 0.025 kg/s, CR = 100x, and its value was 35.74%. Further, the results show that the maximum thermal and electrical energies were 618.5 W and 219.35 W, respectively. The numerical model was validated with experimental data and demonstrated that the maximum error between the experimental and CFD models was less than 5%, confirming that the results are satisfactory and agree well with the experimental results. Finally, the results show that CPVT is a promising renewable energy system with excellent opportunities to compete with conventional power generation systems.