High energy demand is leading to the replacement of fossil energy with renewable sources such as solar energy. Solar cells are devices used to generate solar energy. However, when exposed to sunlight with high intensity, a solar cell can suffer a decrease in performance due to overheating. This issue can be addressing by adding a cooling system. This study used a passive cooling system by adding a heat sink with fins to the body panel of the solar cell. The advantage of the passive cooling system is that it does not require additional energy. The number of fins and types of material were varied to obtain the best passive cooling system. The number of fins used was 5, 10, and 15, and the materials used were aluminum and copper. The wind speed vector and the temperature distribution were investigated through simulation. The results showed an increase in the number of fins provided better cooling capacity and increased the photovoltaic performance. The best cooling capability and performance were obtained using 15 fins with a copper base and fin heat sink materials. The decrease in temperature and the increase in efficiency were 10.2 °C and 2.74%, respectively. Therefore, the use of passive cooling system based on heat sinks with fins could provide a potential solution to increase performance and prevent overheating of photovoltaic (PV) panel systems.
Doped and undoped zinc oxide fibers were fabricated by electrospinning at various solution flow rates of 2, 4, and 6 ll/min followed by sintering at 550 C. The nanogenerators (NGs) fabricated from the fibers were examined for their performance by applying loads (0.25-1.5 kg) representing fingers taps on the keyboard. A higher solution flow rate resulted in a larger fiber diameter, thus reducing nanogenerator voltage. The maximum power density for undoped zinc oxide-based and doped zinc oxide-based nanogenerators was 17.6 and 51.7 nW/cm 2 , respectively, under a load of 1.25 kg. Enhancing nanogenerator stability is a topic that should be investigated further.
In this study, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated using double-layer photoanodes consisting of TiO2 nanoparticles (NPs) and Zn-doped TiO2 hollow fibers (HFs). The TiO2 HFs were prepared by co-axial electrospinning and used as the light-scattering layer in the DSSC. The thickness variations of the TiO2 NP and Zn-doped TiO2 HF photoanode layers affect the performance of the DSSC, especially the short-circuit photocurrent density. The thickness of the TiO2 NP layer significantly affected the absorbance of photons and N719 dye molecules in the double-layer photoanode, while that of the Zn-doped TiO2 HF layer affected the scattering of light, as indicated by the low light transmittance in the photoanode. Conventional DSSCs consist of single-layer photoanodes, and exhibit relatively low efficiency, i.e., 1.293% and 0.89% for TiO2 NP and Zn-doped TiO2 HF, respectively. However, herein, the highest efficiency of the DSSC (3.122%) was achieved with a 15 μm NP-5 μm HF photoanode, for which the short-circuit photocurrent density, open-circuit photovoltage, and fill factor were 15.81 mA/cm2, 0.566 V, and 34.91%, respectively.
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