Design study of high-efficiency thermophotovoltaic solar vell

Abstract

Our manuscript studies the characteristics of a new design of selective Metamaterial (MM) emitter for near-infrared wavelength range, after a brief overview of MMs foundation, operating mechanisms with state of the art of TPV technologies. MM absorber/emitter for TPV application has been numerically investigated for a wide-band absorption with a selective emittance, this study highlights the theories, properties, and applications of MM absorber/emitter, and their requirements for an efficient conversion such as polarizationinsensitive, wide-angle of incidence, thermal stability given by high melting temperature point of the used materials as SiO2 and Tungsten. A rigorous approach for simulation has been performed to understand the behavior of the new design at near-infrared and optical wavelength ranges, by using the HFSS solver based on the Finite Element Method (FEM). Absorption rates of 99% are numerically achieved covering a wide range from 120THz to 600THz. Finally, the suggested design has been exploited for the TPV system. The highest TPV conversion efficiency of 27% can be achieved by using two types of TPV cells (GaSb) and (InGaAsSb), for a high-temperature (2100°C), on the other hand, for low operating temperatures (e.g. TBB = 600ºC), furthermore, (InAsSbP) TPV cell associates to achieve 22.5% of TPV conversion efficiency. Therefore, the selected absorber/emitter design can operate at a wide temperature range from 600 to 2100 ºC.