IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v12y2019i24p4719-d296503.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dispersive Optical Systems for Highly-Concentrated Solar Spectrum Splitting: Concept, Design, and Performance Analyses

Author

Listed:
  • Si Kuan Thio

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore)

  • Sung-Yong Park

    (Department of Mechanical Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-1323, USA)

Abstract

We present a concept design of a solar spectrum splitting system that enables highly-concentrated solar energy harvesting over the entire AM1.5 spectral range. After passing through an array of the dispersive optical system (DOS) module composed of a grating structure and dispersive prisms below a concentrating lens, incident sunlight can be separated into two wavelength bands of visible (VIS) and infrared (IR) ranges, which can then be focused onto corresponding solar receivers. Based on the spectral response of typical crystalline silicon solar cells, the VIS wavelength band is selected from 0.4 μm to 1.2 μm to contribute to photovoltaic (PV) conversion to generate electricity. Meanwhile, the IR band in longer wavelength ranges (1.2 μm ≤ λ ≤ 2.5 μm), which does not contribute to PV conversion, can be simultaneously used for solar thermal applications such as water heating and thermoelectricity. In this paper, various design parameters (e.g., focal length of a concentrating lens, groove density of a grating, geometry of dispersive prisms, material combination of optical components, etc.) have been investigated to determine an optimum set of system configurations, using optical design software (Zemax OpticStudio 14.2). Our simulation studies validate that the DOS is able to split incident AM1.5 solar irradiance into the two wavelength bands of the VIS and IR ranges and focus each wavelength band with concentration factors as high as 798× and 755× on the same focal plane, respectively. Such high concentration factors for both wavelength bands can be actualized due to the additional optical components used—a grating structure and dispersive prisms, which allow to minimize optical aberrations through both diffraction and refraction. The proposed DOS, designed with commercially available optical components, has the potential to widen the use of the sun’s spectrum by allowing effective PV conversion of solar cells under high concentration with tolerable optical system losses and concurrently converting the remaining solar irradiation into useful energy for a broad range of thermal applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Si Kuan Thio & Sung-Yong Park, 2019. "Dispersive Optical Systems for Highly-Concentrated Solar Spectrum Splitting: Concept, Design, and Performance Analyses," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-18, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:24:p:4719-:d:296503
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4719/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/24/4719/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Narasimhan, Vinayak & Jiang, Dongyue & Park, Sung-Yong, 2016. "Design and optical analyses of an arrayed microfluidic tunable prism panel for enhancing solar energy collection," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 450-459.
    2. Crisostomo, Felipe & Taylor, Robert A. & Zhang, Tian & Perez-Wurfl, Ivan & Rosengarten, Gary & Everett, Vernie & Hawkes, Evatt R., 2014. "Experimental testing of SiNx/SiO2 thin film filters for a concentrating solar hybrid PV/T collector," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 79-87.
    3. Looser, R. & Vivar, M. & Everett, V., 2014. "Spectral characterisation and long-term performance analysis of various commercial Heat Transfer Fluids (HTF) as Direct-Absorption Filters for CPV-T beam-splitting applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1496-1511.
    4. Ju, Xing & Xu, Chao & Han, Xue & Du, Xiaoze & Wei, Gaosheng & Yang, Yongping, 2017. "A review of the concentrated photovoltaic/thermal (CPVT) hybrid solar systems based on the spectral beam splitting technology," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 534-563.
    5. Vignarooban, K. & Xu, Xinhai & Arvay, A. & Hsu, K. & Kannan, A.M., 2015. "Heat transfer fluids for concentrating solar power systems – A review," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 383-396.
    6. Treble, Fred, 1998. "Milestones in the development of crystalline silicon solar cells," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 473-478.
    7. Evaldo C. Gouvêa & Pedro M. Sobrinho & Teófilo M. Souza, 2017. "Spectral Response of Polycrystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Cells under Real-Use Conditions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-13, August.
    8. Mojiri, Ahmad & Taylor, Robert & Thomsen, Elizabeth & Rosengarten, Gary, 2013. "Spectral beam splitting for efficient conversion of solar energy—A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 654-663.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hong, Wenpeng & Li, Boyu & Li, Haoran & Niu, Xiaojuan & Li, Yan & Lan, Jingrui, 2022. "Recent progress in thermal energy recovery from the decoupled photovoltaic/thermal system equipped with spectral splitters," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    2. Ben Amara, Mahmoud & Rdhaounia, Elhem & Balghouthi, Moncef, 2024. "Experimental study of a concentrating solar spectrum splitting system for hybrid solar energy conversion," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    3. Pan, Hong-Yu & Chen, Xue & Xia, Xin-Lin, 2022. "A review on the evolvement of optical-frequency filtering in photonic devices in 2016–2021," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Han, Xinyue & Xue, Dengshuai & Zheng, Jun & Alelyani, Sami M. & Chen, Xiaobin, 2019. "Spectral characterization of spectrally selective liquid absorption filters and exploring their effects on concentrator solar cells," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 938-945.
    2. Hong, Wenpeng & Li, Boyu & Li, Haoran & Niu, Xiaojuan & Li, Yan & Lan, Jingrui, 2022. "Recent progress in thermal energy recovery from the decoupled photovoltaic/thermal system equipped with spectral splitters," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    3. Huang, Gan & Wang, Kai & Curt, Sara Riera & Franchetti, Benjamin & Pesmazoglou, Ioannis & Markides, Christos N., 2021. "On the performance of concentrating fluid-based spectral-splitting hybrid PV-thermal (PV-T) solar collectors," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 590-605.
    4. Widyolar, Bennett & Jiang, Lun & Winston, Roland, 2018. "Spectral beam splitting in hybrid PV/T parabolic trough systems for power generation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 236-250.
    5. Liang, Huaxu & Wang, Fuqiang & Yang, Luwei & Cheng, Ziming & Shuai, Yong & Tan, Heping, 2021. "Progress in full spectrum solar energy utilization by spectral beam splitting hybrid PV/T system," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    6. Mojiri, Ahmad & Stanley, Cameron & Rodriguez-Sanchez, David & Everett, Vernie & Blakers, Andrew & Rosengarten, Gary, 2016. "A spectral-splitting PV–thermal volumetric solar receiver," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 63-71.
    7. Ju, Xing & Abd El-Samie, Mostafa M. & Xu, Chao & Yu, Hangyu & Pan, Xinyu & Yang, Yongping, 2020. "A fully coupled numerical simulation of a hybrid concentrated photovoltaic/thermal system that employs a therminol VP-1 based nanofluid as a spectral beam filter," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    8. Pan, Hong-Yu & Chen, Xue & Xia, Xin-Lin, 2022. "A review on the evolvement of optical-frequency filtering in photonic devices in 2016–2021," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    9. Brekke, Nick & Dale, John & DeJarnette, Drew & Hari, Parameswar & Orosz, Matthew & Roberts, Kenneth & Tunkara, Ebrima & Otanicar, Todd, 2018. "Detailed performance model of a hybrid photovoltaic/thermal system utilizing selective spectral nanofluid absorption," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 683-693.
    10. Wang, Kai & Pantaleo, Antonio M. & Herrando, María & Faccia, Michele & Pesmazoglou, Ioannis & Franchetti, Benjamin M. & Markides, Christos N., 2020. "Spectral-splitting hybrid PV-thermal (PVT) systems for combined heat and power provision to dairy farms," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 1047-1065.
    11. Otanicar, Todd & Dale, John & Orosz, Matthew & Brekke, Nick & DeJarnette, Drew & Tunkara, Ebrima & Roberts, Kenneth & Harikumar, Parameswar, 2018. "Experimental evaluation of a prototype hybrid CPV/T system utilizing a nanoparticle fluid absorber at elevated temperatures," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 1531-1539.
    12. Kandilli, Canan & Külahlı, Gürhan, 2017. "Performance analysis of a concentrated solar energy for lighting-power generation combined system based on spectral beam splitting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 713-727.
    13. Qu, Wanjun & Hong, Hui & Jin, Hongguang, 2019. "A spectral splitting solar concentrator for cascading solar energy utilization by integrating photovoltaics and solar thermal fuel," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 248(C), pages 162-173.
    14. Lu, Kegui & Yu, Qiongwan & Zhao, Bin & Pei, Gang, 2023. "Performance analysis of a novel PV/T hybrid system based on spectral beam splitting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 398-406.
    15. Widyolar, Bennett & Jiang, Lun & Ferry, Jonathan & Winston, Roland & Kirk, Alexander & Osowski, Mark & Cygan, David & Abbasi, Hamid, 2019. "Theoretical and experimental performance of a two-stage (50X) hybrid spectrum splitting solar collector tested to 600 °C," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(C), pages 514-525.
    16. Lamnatou, Chr. & Vaillon, R. & Parola, S. & Chemisana, D., 2021. "Photovoltaic/thermal systems based on concentrating and non-concentrating technologies: Working fluids at low, medium and high temperatures," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Zhao, Xiaobo & Han, Xinyue & Yao, Yiping & Huang, Ju, 2022. "Stability investigation of propylene glycol-based Ag@SiO2 nanofluids and their performance in spectral splitting photovoltaic/thermal systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 238(PC).
    18. Stanley, Cameron & Mojiri, Ahmad & Rahat, Mirza & Blakers, Andrew & Rosengarten, Gary, 2016. "Performance testing of a spectral beam splitting hybrid PVT solar receiver for linear concentrators," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 303-313.
    19. Tang, Sanli & Hong, Hui & Jin, Hongguang & Xuan, Yimin, 2019. "A cascading solar hybrid system for co-producing electricity and solar syngas with nanofluid spectrum selector," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 248(C), pages 231-240.
    20. An, Wei & Zhang, Jie & Zhu, Tong & Gao, Naiping, 2016. "Investigation on a spectral splitting photovoltaic/thermal hybrid system based on polypyrrole nanofluid: Preliminary test," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 633-642.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:24:p:4719-:d:296503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.