Increase the efficiency of solar panels using a heating element
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a way to improve the efficiency of conventional solar panels. They propose to introduce an intermediate heating element between the flow of solar radiation and the surface of the panels. The idea is that when heated, this element will emit in the spectrum, which is better suited for absorption by standard silicon cells.
A nanophoton solar thermophoto-electric element composed of several layers of carbon nanotubes as an absorber and a photonic Si / SiO 2 crystal as an emitter, as well as a solar photocell at 0.55 eV
Contrary to logic, adding an additional conversion step here actually increases efficiency, because it allows you to get energy from photons at frequencies that usually go to waste.
Conventional solar panels convert energy into energy only those photons that correspond to certain frames along the lower and upper limits of the range. Silicon chip is sensitive to a wide spectrum, but many photons pass by it. Adding a carbon nanotube absorber can solve this problem. This layer is sensitive to a larger frequency range and when bombarded with photons it heats up to 962 ° C. When heated, it emits photons of strictly defined energy, which are perfectly absorbed by the photocell and converted into electricity.
')
Theorists predicted a similar technology several years ago, and now it has been implemented in practice. They said that thermoelements would allow overcoming the theoretical limit of the efficiency of solar energy conversion for silicon microcircuits, set at 33.7% (Shockley-Queiser limit). In this case, the efficiency can theoretically reach 80%.
However, in practice, scientists are still far from the theoretically maximum limit. Previous experiments could not demonstrate an efficiency higher than 1%, but at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology they recorded a conversion efficiency of 3.2%, and the authors of the scientific work are confident that they will be able to increase it to 20% in the near future. According to them, this is enough for the release of a commercial product.
The scientific work describing the thermophotoelectric element was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
A nanophoton solar thermophoto-electric element composed of several layers of carbon nanotubes as an absorber and a photonic Si / SiO 2 crystal as an emitter, as well as a solar photocell at 0.55 eV
Contrary to logic, adding an additional conversion step here actually increases efficiency, because it allows you to get energy from photons at frequencies that usually go to waste.
Conventional solar panels convert energy into energy only those photons that correspond to certain frames along the lower and upper limits of the range. Silicon chip is sensitive to a wide spectrum, but many photons pass by it. Adding a carbon nanotube absorber can solve this problem. This layer is sensitive to a larger frequency range and when bombarded with photons it heats up to 962 ° C. When heated, it emits photons of strictly defined energy, which are perfectly absorbed by the photocell and converted into electricity.
')
Theorists predicted a similar technology several years ago, and now it has been implemented in practice. They said that thermoelements would allow overcoming the theoretical limit of the efficiency of solar energy conversion for silicon microcircuits, set at 33.7% (Shockley-Queiser limit). In this case, the efficiency can theoretically reach 80%.
However, in practice, scientists are still far from the theoretically maximum limit. Previous experiments could not demonstrate an efficiency higher than 1%, but at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology they recorded a conversion efficiency of 3.2%, and the authors of the scientific work are confident that they will be able to increase it to 20% in the near future. According to them, this is enough for the release of a commercial product.
The scientific work describing the thermophotoelectric element was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210346/
All Articles