A novel hybrid system consisting of a dye-sensitized solar cell and an absorption refrigerator for power and cooling cogeneration

doi:10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2020.02.009

International Journal of Refrigeration

Volume 113, May 2020, Pages 115-125

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2020.02.009 Get rights and content

Highlights

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A new solar powered electricity and cooling cogeneration system is proposed.
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Various irreversible losses within the proposed system are described.
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Parameters evaluating the proposed system performance are mathematically formulated.
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Absorption refrigerators are effective to improve the DSSC performance.
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Effects of some designing parameters and operating conditions are revealed.

Abstract

To improve the energy conversion efficiency of a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC), a novel hybrid system representatively consisting of a DSSC and an absorption refrigerator (APR) is put forward, in which the APR is used to thermally harness the part of high wavelength sunlight that not converted by the DSSC. The amount of heat from the DSSC is calculated, and mathematical formula for energy conversion efficiencies and output powers of the DSSC, APR and hybrid system are derived. Numerical calculations show that the maximum output power density and maximum energy conversion efficiency of hybrid system are enhanced by 9.93% and 9.92% in comparison with that of the single DSSC, respectively. Integration of APR to DSSC is a feasible route to effectively improve the energy conversion efficiency. Comprehensive sensitivity analyses are conducted to explore how the whole hybrid system performance depends on various working conditions and designing parameters, including porous nano-TiO₂ film thickness, photoelectron absorption coefficient, internal irreversibility factor, heat transfer coefficient and various temperatures. The research results can provide some new understandings for further enhancing the DSSC performance.

Introduction

By the middle of the century, oil will be exhausted and its price will be rose so high that it will no longer be widely affordable for common people (Jarrett et al., 2019). If new renewable energy technologies are not fully developed, the energy crisis will worsen, especially in those countries that heavily depend on oil resources. At present, many countries are now actively developing new renewable energies, such as solar energy (Prăvălie et al., 2019), hydrogen energy (Zhang et al., 2017) and marine energy (Bonar et al., 2018) (including tidal energy (Ling et al., 2018) and wave energy (Xu et al., 2018)), or turning their attention to new fossil energies, such as seabed combustible ice (natural gas hydrate), shale gas (Zeng et al., 2019). Among these new renewable energies, solar energy has drawn much attention because of its unique advantages, such as free, clean and abundant. Solar energy can be effectively converted to power with the help of some technologies and devices, such as solar thermal technology, concentrated solar power system and photovoltaic (PV) cell (Ju et al., 2017). Among them, PV cells can directly transform solar energy into electrical energy, which offer distinct characteristics of flexibility, durability and cleanliness compared with other conventional thermal power technologies (Al-Dousari et al., 2019).

As a kind of PV cells, DSSC has attracted wide attention because of its advantages, such as low cost, stability, highly photoelectric conversion efficiency and achievable large-scale industrialized production (Sharma, 2018). At present, considerable theoretical and experimental researches have been carried out on DSSCs, including natural sensitizer development (Pounraj et al., 2017), photo electrode fabrication (Pervez et al., 2019), efficient electrolyte development (Nguyen et al., 2019), performance simulation (Huen and Daoud, 2017), electrocatalysts fabrication (Kweon and Baek, 2019) and synthesis of organic materials (Sambathkumar et al., 2019).

The photoelectric conversion efficiency is essential for DSSCs. However, up to 80% of energy received by the solar plate surface is wasted into the surroundings. Hence, the energy conversion efficiency of DSSCs has great potential for improvement. The efficiency of DSSCs can be greatly improved if the part of high wavelength sunlight is thermally collected and recovered for bottoming power generation (Jouhara et al., 2018). For example, Su et al. (2014) used thermoelectric generators (TEGs) to recover the waste heat from DSSCs. Wang et al. (2011) put forward a hybrid device consisting of a photovoltaic (PV) cell and a TEG, and they revealed that the energy conversion efficiency of hybrid device had been enhanced by 13% with respect to the stand-alone DSSC. Kil et al. (2017) demonstrated a GaAs-based solar cell hybrid system with the help of a conventional thermoelectric module. It was found that the hybrid system efficiency was about 3% greater than that of the single GaAs-based solar cell at the condition of 50 suns concentration. Yin et al. (2019) evaluated the feasibility of a hybrid device consisting of a PV cell and a thermoelectric module. Zhao et al. (2019) established a hybrid device model composed of a DSSC and a thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC), and the calculation results revealed that the maximum output power density and efficiency of the hybrid device were enhanced by 32.18% and 32.04% compared with that of a single DSSC, respectively. Wang et al. (2018) introduced a hybrid system containing of a PV cell and a TREC to achieve greater energy conversion efficiency. Bai et al. (2019a) developed a solar-biomass gasification polygeneration system to cogenerate liquid fuel methanol and electricity.

In addition to power generation, the heat from DSSCs can be alternatively used for cooling production (Bai et al., 2019b; Fellah et al., 2019). An APR enables to use the low-grade waste heat for cooling production and offers many advantages such as quietness (Chaves et al., 2019), reliability (Wang et al., 2017), environmental friendliness (Lijuan et al., 2019) and high profit (Bellos and Tzivanidis, 2019; Mohammad et al., 2014). For example, Pourfayaz et al. (2019) utilized an APR to harvest the waste heat from high-temperature fuel cells for cooling purposes. Inada et al. (2019) applied an APR to utilize the waste heat from automotive exhaust gas. Mirzaee et al. (2019) used APRs to recover the waste heat from gas turbine. Zhang et al. (2016a) put forward a hybrid system consisting of an APR and a molten carbonate fuel cell, and the maximum power density for the hybrid system and the corresponding efficiency had increased by 3.8% and 3.2%, respectively. Zhang et al. (2019) also theoretically established a novel triple-cycle system consisting of APRs, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and vacuum thermionic generators to gradually harvest the high-quality waste heat from SOFCs. Numerical calculations indicated that the maximum power density and its corresponding efficiency had been greatly improved. Açıkkalp et al. (2019) put forward a novel coupling system consisting of APR system, chemical heat pump and solar driven Stirling engine. The results revealed that the maximum output power and energy efficiency of the hybrid system are increased by 14% and 13%, respectively. Lee et al. (2017) proposed a hybrid system composed of APRs and high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFCs), and the equivalent efficiency of the combined system was enhanced by 8% with respect to that of a single HT-PEMFC. Wang et al. (2019) employed an APR to harvest the waste heat from an alkali metal thermoelectric converter (AMTEC). The hybrid system maximum efficiency (39.24%) was higher than the maximum efficiency (26.57%) of the stand-alone AMTEC. Obviously, the low-grade heat from DSSCs can be used to further drive an APR for cooling production. However, an up-to-date literature research shows that no relevant study has reported on this topic.

In the present work, a novel hybrid system that couples an APR to harvest the part of high wavelength sunlight not utilized by the DSSC is put forward. Mathematical expressions for efficiency and output power for the DSSC, APR and hybrid system will be deduced by including multiple irreversible losses. From which, the effectiveness of the hybrid system will be evaluated. Comprehensive sensitivity analyses will be implemented to study how the proposed hybrid system performance relates to some working conditions and designing parameters, including porous nano-TiO₂ film thickness, photoelectron absorption coefficient, internal irreversibility factor, heat transfer coefficient and the involved temperatures.

Section snippets

System description

As shown in Fig. 1, the hybrid system contains a DSSC, a solar selective absorber (SSA) and an APR, where the APR consists of a generator, an absorber, a condenser and an evaporator, and the SSA is placed between the DSSC and the generator of APR. The SSA is treated as a near-perfect blackbody absorber which converts the relatively high wavelength sunlight into heat (Selvakumar et al., 2014). Due to the high thermal conductivity of SSA, the heat can be rapidly transferred from the SSA to the

Model validation

Because no relevant experimental study for this specific hybrid system has been reported yet, the DSSC model will be validated instead. Fig. 3 compares the present modeling results with the experimental data from Fitra et al. (2013). It is seen that the present modeling results are well agreed with the experimental data, indicating that the present theoretical model is valid to predict an actual DSSC performance.

Generic performance characteristic

The output power densities and energy conversion efficiencies of the hybrid system, DSSC and APR varying with J are shown in Fig. 4, Fig. 5. It is seen that both output power densities and energy conversion efficiencies of both hybrid system and DSSC first grow and then decrease as J increases, while both output power density and energy conversion efficiency of the APR first decrease and then increase as J increases. For the parameters in Tables 1 and 2, $P_{D S S C . \max}^{*}$ and η_DSSC.max are,

Results and discussion

In this section, sensitivity analyses will be used to explore how this novel hybrid system performance is impacted by some designing parameters and operating conditions, including porous nano-TiO₂ film thickness, photoelectron absorption coefficient, internal irreversibility factor, heat-transfer coefficient and various temperatures.

Conclusion

A novel hybrid system mainly composed of a DSSC and an APR is proposed to further thermally harness the part of high wavelength sunlight for energy conversion efficiency improvement. The rate of waste heat from DSSC varying with the DSSC operating current density is calculated. The energy conversion efficiency and output power density of the DSSC, APR and hybrid system have been derived. The proposed system is found to be effective, and the output power density and energy conversion efficiency

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant No. LY20E060002), and the K. C. Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University, China.

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A novel hybrid system consisting of a dye-sensitized solar cell and an absorption refrigerator for power and cooling cogenerationUn nouveau système hybride composé d’une cellule solaire à colorant et d’un réfrigérateur à absorption pour la cogénération d’électricité et de froid

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

System description

Model validation

Generic performance characteristic

Results and discussion

Conclusion

Declaration of Competing Interest

Acknowledgments

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