Performance improvement of a desiccant based cooling system by mitigation of non-uniform illumination on the coupled low concentrating photovoltaic thermal units

A Low Concentrating Photovoltaic Thermal system typically employs compound parabolic concentrator to focus sunlight and enhance the quality of both thermal electrical energy extracted. One major issues during this process is introduction non-uniform illumination on photovoltaic panels which can cause hot-spots significantly reduce reliability output from system. This be mitigated by integrating homogenizers are linear extensions concentrators profile also referred as elongated concentrators. In work, performance a 2.5× Elongated Compound Parabolic Concentrator truncated 1.7× connected desiccant based cooling has been explored. For detailed analysis system, coupled 3-D optical, electrical, efficiency model developed. full-scale prototype modelled fabricated using 380-Watt peak panel. Experiments conducted developed showed outlet water temperature 56 °C at mass flowrate 24 L per hour. Comparative studies between low concentrating presented showcase overall improvement in due mitigation non-uniformity. Using 400 mm length homogenizer spatial non-uniformity factor was found drop 0.5 0.29 under normal incidence angle results rise 12% when compared concentrators-based The coefficient desiccant-based air-cooling increase 50% with two series-connected mainly because savings amounting 352 kWhe/year 665 kWhth/year, respectively. Further, 5%