Heat Transfer Analysis of Non-Imaging Dish Concentrator Cooling System

Chia, Cheng Quan (2017) Heat Transfer Analysis of Non-Imaging Dish Concentrator Cooling System. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

The photovoltaic solar system used in this project is the High Concentrator Photovoltaic (HCPV) which using the parabolic solar dish as the sun rays to the photovoltaic (PV) cell. This concentrator solar system has high efficiency to collect the solar energy and effective devices to reduce the cost in power generation. But, the PV cell will damage easily due to high concentration of heat from sun ray and the heat will accumulate by increasing temperature on the PV cell. Thus, a cooling system required to cool down the PV cell for prevent damage and does not affect the performance PV cell for power generation. In this project, the geothermal concept is apply for cooling system which is using the ground temperature to cool down the hot water carry from cooling block. The cooling block was attached with the PV cell, the water will flow through it for absorption and carry the heat to the cooling system. From the research, there is low temperature of underground within 20km depth which able to cool down the high temperature of water. The underground soil will absorb the heat from the pipe with heat transfer taking places. There are 2 types of heat transfer method apply in this study such as conduction and convection. For conduction, the heat transfer will take place between the wall of the pipe and the soil. For convection, it is a forced convection applies in this cooling system as the water flow through the cooling system with turbulent flow. As the solar irradiation is high, the more heat will absorb on the ground and cause the ground temperature nearer to atmosphere surface increase. Thus, the pipe has installed with 0.5 meter depth which has lowest temperature as compared to 1.0 meter depth underground. This geothermal cooling system is able to cool down by 1.5°C which better than the fan radiator in previous data. The efficiency of cooling system has improved by 25% as compared to fan radiator. The design of geothermal cooling system is using a horizontal loop piping which is simple. Besides, the cost of this cooling system is also cheaper than the radiator. This is because it saves the electricity usage from the radiator and the geothermal piping cooling system does not include any mechanisms part which need for maintenance cost. Therefore, this cooling system is better than the fan radiator as previous cooling system.