High-efficiency bio-inspired hybrid multi-generation photovoltaic leaf
File(s)
Published verison
Author(s)
Huang, Gan
Xu, Jingyuan
Markides, Christos
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Most solar energy incident (>70%) upon commercial photovoltaic panelsis dissipated as heat, increasing their operating temperature, and leading to significant deterioration in electrical performance. The solar utilization efficiency of commercial photovoltaic panels is typically below 25%. Here, we demonstrate a hybrid multi-generation photovoltaic leaf concept that employs a biomimetic transpiration structure made of eco-friendly, low-cost and widely-available materials for effective passive thermal management and multi-generation. We demonstrate experimentally that bio-inspired transpiration can remove
~590 W/m2 of heat from a photovoltaic cell, reducing the cell temperature by ~26 °C under an irradiance
of 1000 W/m2, and resulting in a 13.6% increase in electrical efficiency. Furthermore, the photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilizing the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar
utilization efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.
~590 W/m2 of heat from a photovoltaic cell, reducing the cell temperature by ~26 °C under an irradiance
of 1000 W/m2, and resulting in a 13.6% increase in electrical efficiency. Furthermore, the photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilizing the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar
utilization efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.
Date Issued
2023-06-08
Date Acceptance
2023-05-30
Citation
Nature Communications, 2023, 14
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
14
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 3344