EXPERIMENTAL AND SIMULATION STUDY FOR IMPROVING THE SOLAR CELL EFFICIENCY BY USING ALUMINUM HEAT SINKS

The research conducted deals with the use of an aluminum heat sink, which is

usually used to cool electronic cores and integrated circuits, to cool a solar

cell and study the effect of microprocessors and integrated circuits on the

performance and temperature of the cell. In this study, an experiment was

carried out and simulated using computational fluid dynamics. The results

showed that increasing the temperature of the solar cell leads to an

accelerated decrease in the open circuit voltage, but when a heat sink is used,

the increasing temperature of the cell is reduced more slowly over the same

period. Thus, the open circuit voltage drop is reduced more slowly as well,

which means the cell operates more efficiently under the same conditions. The

temperatures are 290 K at the lowest point and 350 K at the highest point,

which shows that heat is being dissipated from the solar cell to the heat sink.

It is evident that as the heat sink’s number of fins increases, the rate at which

heat is transferred increases because the enhanced heat transfer that results

from having more fins lowers the heat sink’s temperature. These findings can

help improve the efficiency of solar power generation and increase the

efficiency of solar cells in converting solar energy into electrical energy.

ATHEER RAHEEM ABDULLAH

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