Distributed and self-adaptive microfluidic cell cooling for CPV dense array receivers

Abstract

Temperature non uniformities of the CPV receivers lead to mismatch losses. In order to deal with this issue, a cooling device, formed by a matrix of microfluidic cells with individually variable coolant flow rate, has been developed. This device tailors the distribution of the heat extraction capacity over the CPV receiver to the local cooling needs in order to reduce the temperature non uniformities with respect to microchannel devices when submitted to uniform or non-uniform illumination profiles. At equal average temperature of the CPV receiver, power generation applying the matrix of microfluidic cells with individually variable coolant flow rate is 9.7% higher than the one with conventional microchannel technology.

The research leading to these results has been performed within the STREAMS project and received funding from the European Community's Horizon 2020 program under Grant Agreement n° 688564