We have achieved significant accomplishments on the developments of nanophotonic absorber and emitter structures for solar thermal photovoltaic applications. The highlight include: (1) The first computational design of a realistic nanophotonic absorber and emitter structures that enable system efficiency beyond the ShockleyQueisser limit. We have provided the first computational design of a Tun...

A mathematical model for computing the thermal performance of an air heater with a truncated compound parabolic concentrator having a flat one-sided absorber is presented. A computer code that employs an iterative solution procedure is constructed to solve the governing energy equations and to estimate the performance parameters of the collector. The effects of the air mass flow rate, the wind ...

Literature about entropy generation analysis of a wavy enclosure is scare. In this paper. a FORTRAN cod using an explicit finite-volume method was provided for estimating the entropy production due to the natural convection heat transfer in a cosine wavy absorber solar collector. The volumetric entropy generation terms both the heat transfer term and the friction term were straightly calculated...

There is a renewed interest in photovoltaic solar thermal (PVT) hybrid systems, which harvest solar energy for heat and electricity. Typically, a main focus of a PVT system is to cool the photovoltaic (PV) cells to improve the electrical performance, however, this causes the thermal component to under-perform compared to a solar thermal collector. The low temperature coefficients of amorphous s...

We propose and theoretically investigate an efficient solar light absorber based on a multilayer structure consisting of tungsten nanoparticle layers and SiO2 layers. According to our calculation, average absorbance over 94% is achieved in the wavelength range between 400 and 2500 nm for the proposed absorber. The excellent performance of the absorber can be attributed to the localized surface ...

Direct solar absorption has been often considered in the past as a possible solution for solar thermal collectors for residential and small commercial applications. A direct absorption could indeed improve the performance of solar collectors by skipping one step of the heat transfer mechanism in standard devices and having a more convenient temperature distribution inside the collector. Classic...

The optimization of the poor heat transfer characteristics of fluids conventionally employed in solar devices are at present one of the main topics for system efficiency and compactness. In the present work we investigated the optical and thermal properties of nanofluids consisting in aqueous suspensions of single wall carbon nanohorns. The characteristics of these nanofluids were evaluated in ...

Coatings of carbon nanoparticles dispersed in SiO2, ZnO and NiO matrices on aluminium substrates have been fabricated by a sol–gel technique. Spectrophotometry was used to determine the solar absorptance and the thermal emittance of the composite coatings with a view to apply these as selective solar absorber surfaces in solar thermal collectors. Cross-sectional high resolution transmission ele...