Opportunity Details

Details about the opportunity you selected and the mentor are shown below. It is your responsibility to contact the mentor to discuss collaborating with them this summer. If your mentor invites you to submit an application, you can access that from the front page of this site. Upon completion of the application, it will be sent to the mentor for approval before being passed on to the Summer Scholar Selection Committee, which will make the decisions.

Faculty Information
	Vincent Manno
	Vincent.Manno@tufts.edu
	Associate Dean & Professor (Mechanical Engr)
	P: (617) 627-2548
	F: (617) 627-3819
Address:
	Anderson Hall 105 Tufts University
	Medford, MA 02155

Opportunity:
	Passive Cooling of Photovoltaic Arrays for Enhanced Efficiency
Summary:
	The use of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells for electric power production is undergoing exponential growth. This growth is being driven by energy costs, the desire for reduced carbon intensity power production, decreased manufacturing costs, and increasing PV cell efficiency. Polycrystalline silicon (Si) PV cells have energy conversion efficiencies of 10-20% while CdTe and multijunction (Si/CdTe, etc.) cells can have efficiencies near 40%. Cell operating temperature is a major factor in determining solar cell performance. For example, decreasing the operation temperature of a Si-based PV cell can increase its efficiency, as well as its maximum power output, by 12-15%. PV cell cooling is beginning to appear in commercial products but all current applications utilize cooling as a means of cogeneration, i.e. mining the waste “heat” from the array for space conditioning and garnering the increased solar cell efficiency as a secondary benefit. These systems often utilize “active” cooling systems where the coolant (air, water, glycol mixtures) is driven by fans or liquid pumps which themselves require power and add complexity to the panel array. The goal of the proposed Summer Scholar research project is to explore the utilization of passive cooling mechanisms (i.e. zero power input, no pumps or fans) such as natural air convection in finned arrays or liquid thermosyphon loops to reduce PV array temperature. The objectives of the study would be to: i) baseline the performance of existing systems, ii) perform scoping analysis of cooling options, iii) identify optimal configurations and expected impacts and iv) initiate more detailed simulations using computer-aided engineering tools (e.g. Matlab or COMSOL software). This research could provide the basis of a follow-on undergraduate research project during the academic year (e.g. thesis) and possible research funding proposals.
Contact Via:
	E-mail Phone
What is the timeframe for this research opportunity?
	May 25-July 31, 2009
Prerequisities for students?
	Completed junior year of mechanical or chemical engineering curricula including thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, design and familiarity with basic photovoltaic principles.
Responsibilities for students?
	See project summary.