Desing and on-sun testing of a hybrid PVT prototype using a nanofluid-based selective absorption filter

Hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PVT) solar collectors represent a promising approach to generate electrical and thermal energy from the same compact package. Moreover, beam splitting can be incorporated in these collectors to physical decouple the receivers to optimize their efficiency. In such systems, the PV cells are illuminated only with the region of the solar spectrum that matches well with their spectral response curves, while the separate thermal receiver can be operated to produce valuable heat (i.e. a high temperature output). In this work, the design of a 8x suns concentrated PVT prototype using a liquid (nanofluid) selective absorption filter is presented. Finally, actual transmittance curves of different nanofluids are presented which demonstrate that they are excellent candidates to be used as selective band-pass filters in PVT collectors using beam splitting. Preliminary experimental results of this research are also reported — in which the hybrid output is compared with the electrical output of the same PV cell array without spectral splitting.