Design and Thermodynamic Analysis of a Novel Solar CBS-PVT System Using Film-Based Beam Splitting Technology

An innovative solar concentrating beam splitting photovoltaic thermal (CBS-PVT) system using a half-trough concentrator (HTC) and a film spectrum filter (FSF) is proposed and studied in this study. The FSF used for this system is designed and its average reflectivity and transmissivity are 0.272 and 0.728 for the full spectrum range. Performance evaluation results of the CBS-PVT system reveal the design correctness of the system. When the N-S solar tracking error (STE) rises to 0.15°, the optical efficiency of the entire CSB-PVT system can be kept at 0.8653, showing good adaptable capacity to the STE. The operation feasibility analysis shows that the PV efficiency of the PV subsystem (PVS) is 0.314 and the overall system efficiency overall is 0.26. Parametric analysis results indicate that when the solar thermal collector tube (TCT) operating temperature rises, the total power and overall efficiency of the CSB-PVT system both rise first and then decrease. When the TCT temperature is about 225 °C, the CBS-PVT system reaches its maximum output power of 1003.6 W and the maximum overall efficiency of 0.261. When the PV cell module (PVCM) temperature increases, the total power and overall efficiency of the CBS-PVT system decrease linearly. When the PVCM temperature rises to 50 °C, the two parameters decrease to 952.9 W and 0.248.