Hydrogen at the Rooftop: Compact CPV-Hydrogen system to Convert Sunlight to Hydrogen
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Embargo End Date:
2019-12-27
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Article
KAUST Department
Water Desalination and Reuse Research Center (WDRC)Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division
Environmental Science and Engineering Program
Date
2017-12-27Metadata
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Despite being highest potential energy source, solar intermittency and low power density make it difficult for solar energy to compete with the conventional power plants. Highly efficient concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system provides best technology to be paired with the electrolytic hydrogen production, as a sustainable energy source with long term energy storage. However, the conventional gigantic design of CPV system limits its market and application to the open desert fields without any rooftop installation scope, unlike conventional PV. This makes CPV less popular among solar energy customers. This paper discusses the development of compact CPV-Hydrogen system for the rooftop application in the urban region. The in-house built compact CPV system works with hybrid solar tracking of 0.1° accuracy, ensured through proposed double lens collimator based solar tracking sensor. With PEM based electrolyser, the compact CPV-hydrogen system showed 28% CPV efficiency and 18% sunlight to hydrogen (STH) efficiency, for rooftop operation in tropical region of Singapore. For plant designers, the solar to hydrogen production rating of 217 kWh/kg has been presented with 15% STH daily average efficiency, recorded from the long term field operation of the system.Citation
Burhan M, Shahzad MW, Ng KC (2018) Hydrogen at the rooftop: Compact CPV-hydrogen system to convert sunlight to hydrogen. Applied Thermal Engineering 132: 154–164. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.12.094.Sponsors
This research was supported by the International Research Scholarship of Mechanical Engineering Department, National University of Singapore and collaborated with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.Publisher
Elsevier BVJournal
Applied Thermal EngineeringISSN
1359-4311Handle URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/626742Additional Links
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359431117367960Scopus Count
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