Design of a hybrid jet impingement /microchannels cooling device for densely packed PV cells under high concentration

Abstract

A hybrid jet impingement / microchannel cooling scheme was designed and applied to densely packed PV cells under high concentration. An experimental study allows validating the principles of the design and confirming its applicability to the cited system. In order to study the characteristics of the device in a wide range of conditions, a numerical model was developed and experimentally validated. The results allow evaluating the contributions of the cooling device to the performances of densely packed PV cells under high concentration. The main advantages of the system are related to its compactness, its good capacity of heat extraction associated to relatively low pressure losses and its capability to improve the temperature uniformity of the PV receiver with respect to other cooling schemes. These features improve the net electric output of the whole system and its reliability.