Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606

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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences

journal homepage: www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-radiation-research-and-applied-sciences

Analysis of thermal performance a heat pipe for concentrated

photovoltaic cooling
Abdelrahman Lashin a, b, *
a
Physics Dept., College of Applied Science, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
b
Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Heat pipes are used in this study for the concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) passive cooling. Investigations have
CPV been done in two steps: in the first step, the heat pipe’s thermal performance in the horizontal position has been
Heat pipe tested. Two sets cylindrical heat pipes with identical diameters (6 mm) but of different lengths (250 mm and 150
Solar concentrator
mm, respectively) were employed. Each set consists of three heat pipes. The results of the study showed that the
Passive cooling
Thermal performance
heat pipe has a maximum operating point that is dependent on both the intensity of the incident light and the
surrounding temperature. Moreover, this operating point could be determined. For high light intensity, a long
heat pipe performs better than a short one, and vise versa. In the second step, a heat pipe passive cooled CPV
system has been investigated for both long and short heat pipe systems. The performance of heat pipe cooled CPV
system was compared to that of the traditional fins-cooled CPV system. Results showed that at light concen­
trations of 55 X, cooling a solar cell with a heat pipe enhances its maximum output power by 6% for a long heat
pipe and by 7% for a short heat pipe, respectively. While at 210 X illumination concentration, long and short heat
pipes, respectively, produced gains of 16 and 12% in the cell’s maximum output power.

1. Introduction cell temperature elevation necessitate cooling systems. A suitable cool­

The performance of silicon solar cells is very temperature-sensitive.
It has a temperature coefficient of about − 0.5% per ◦ C. It has low
operating temperature about 25 ◦ C as well as low efficiency (up to 25%).
On the other hand the concentrated photovoltaic CPV cells have higher
efficiency (up to 44%) and they are made of a very low-temperature
coefficient of about up to − 0.01% which allows the CPV cell to oper­
ate at high temperature (about 100 ◦ C or more) (Aho et al., 2015; Renno,
2018; Renno et al., 2021). Concentrator photovoltaics CPV systems
concentrate a huge amount of solar energy onto a small area (the area of
the cell) by using mirrors or lenses, therefore they are exposed to high
levels of solar radiation intensity. In consequence, CPV generates a high
current and hence high efficiency, since the incident solar radiation
intensity of the CPV is linearly proportional to output current. Unfor­
tunately, operating under high solar radiation intensity increases the
CPV operating temperature. Despite a little increase in current with the
increase in temperature, the temperature rise of the CPV cell causes a
reduction in the generated voltage, which lowers the cell’s output power
and decreases efficiency (Zsiborács et al., 2019). Such drawbacks due to
ing system must be integrated with the CPV for maintaining the output
power and conversion of efficiency (Theristis & O’Donovan, 2015). The
choice of the cooling system depends on the amount of thermal energy
needed to be rejected. Two different ways of cooling CPV active and
passive cooling (Araki et al., 2002; Edenburn, 1980; Kong et al., 2013).
Active cooling systems are able to reduce the CPV temperature effi­
ciently but they require operations that are more complicated. They also
consume some energy in order to operate. On the other hand, passive
cooling subsystems operate at no cost in comparison to the active
cooling, but are not as efficient as active subsystems.
Several attempts of passive cooling have been performed to achieve
appropriate cell’s efficiency. The most common passive cooling is that
cooling CPV by fins which enables air to circulate beneath the CPV and
dissipates the accumulated heat on backside of the cell into the sur­
rounding by radiation and convection (Refaey et al., 2022). A passive
cooling CPV using the thermoelectric generator has proven its ability to
make use of the excess of heat accumulated on the CPV and converting it
into power besides the CPV power itself (Lashin et al., 2019; Sabry et al.,
2021).
Heat pipe’s passive cooling proves the capability to maintain an

* Physics Dept., College of Applied Science, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
E-mail address: aylashin@uqu.edu.sa.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrras.2023.100606
Received 1 March 2023; Received in revised form 10 May 2023; Accepted 15 May 2023
Available online 26 May 2023
1687-8507/© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Egyptian Society of Radiation Sciences and Applications. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
A. Lashin
Fig. 1. Cycle of the working liquid and its vapor inside the heat pipe.
acceptable CPV efficiency (Feldman et al., 1981; Huang et al., 2012; Lee
& Baek, 2015). Heat pipe is an effective heat transfer device that em­
ploys vapor–liquid phase-change of a working fluid to transmit heat
from a heat source at one of its end to a heat sink at its other end(Nemec
et al., 2013). Heat pipes have the ability to passively transfer an enor­
mous amount of heat at high rates with extremely small temperature
drops over considerable distances. Because of their high efficiency,
reliability, low cost, mechanical flexibility, and adaptability to various
layouts, heat pipes are effective tools in heat transfer industry (Gibbons
et al., 2021; Jouhara et al., 2017). In comparison to solid copper of
comparable physical dimensions, heat pipes have a 200–500 times
greater thermal conductivity (Firouzfar et al., 2011).
1.1. Heat pipes
The conventional heat pipe is a metal tube closed at both ends, as
shown in Fig. 1. It consists of three fundamental sections: a condenser,
an adiabatic transport section, and an evaporator. A working fluid is
present inside the heat pipe in both the liquid and vapor phases. At the
evaporator section, the working fluid vaporizes by absorbing the heat
energy from the heat source. Due to the gas pressure gradient, the
resultant vapor travels through the adiabatic transport section and into
the condenser. As the temperature drops in the condenser, the vapor
begins to cool down, condense to liquid phase and release its latent heat
when it gets closer to the heat pipes cold end. A heat sink is able to
remove this heat from the heat pipe. The wick structure’s capillary ac­
tion then passively pumps the condensate to the evaporator.
Inside a heat pipe, the working fluid frequently undergoes cyclic
phase changes from liquid to vapor and back to liquid. The choice of
working fluid depends on the operating range, the design and of the heat
pipe (Yunus & Alsoufi, 2019). Due to its high latent heat of vaporization,
de-ionized water is the most common working fluid in the industrial
applications. Wick structures increase the operational capabilities of
heat pipes as it assists heat pipes to operate against gravity or at hori­
zontal orientation (Faghri & Zhang, 2019, pp. 535–621; Reay et al.,
2013). In conventional heat pipes, sintered, mesh, and grooved wicks
are the three basic wick structures that are typically used. The wick’s
basic function is to provide capillary pressure, which aids in maintaining
a proper cycle of evaporation and condensation necessary for the
operation of a heat pipe.
As long as there is a temperature difference between the evaporator
and condenser in a heat pipe, the two-phase circulation continue.
(Anderson et al., 2008).
The heat pipe can transfer a maximum amount of heat expressed as
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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606
(Shirazy & Fre’chette, 2011, pp. 575–583; Zohuri, 2021):
2σ cos θ
− ρl gL sin φ
Q̇cap,max = (
eeff
) (1)
Leff μl 2(fRe)h,ν μν
+ D2
Aw φρl Hfg K A ρ H
h,ν ν ν fg
Where σ is working liquid’s surface tension, eeff is the wick’s effective
pore radius, θ is the solid-liquid contact angle, g is gravitational accel­
eration, L is the length of the heat pipe, φ is the heat pipe’s inclination
angle, φ is the wick’s porosity, fReh,v is the Reynolds-based friction
factor, Aν is the cross-sectional area of vapor, μl is the viscosity of the
liquid, μv is viscosity of the vapor, Leff is the effective length, K the
permeability of the wick, Aw is the cross-sectional area of the wick, ρl is
the density of the liquid, ρv is the density of the vapor, Hfg is the latent
heat of vaporization of the working fluid and Dh,ν is the vapor hydraulic
diameter.
There are many different varieties of heat pipe, including micro heat
pipes, loop heat pipes, and traditional cylindrical/flat heat pipes.
Additionally, these heat pipe types could be produced with various ge­
ometries and/or wick topologies (Atay et al., 2019). The appropriate
heat pipe is chosen based on the application. Because they are less
sensitive to changes in the orientation of the gravitational field, loop
heat pipes are preferred in space applications (Su et al., 2018). Heat
pipes are used in spacecraft technology to control the temperature and
keep the overall systems operating at a constant range. Conventional
heat pipes have been used for electronic device cooling for a long time.
Heat pipes are also having application in air-conditioning and waste
heat recovery systems. They also have application in cooking, thermal
water heating applications, heat exchanger, computers and other elec­
tronic devices.
The impact of working positions on thermal performance of heat
pipe was studied (Nemec et al., 2011). They found that the vertical
position may provide the highest levels of performance and mass
transmission. Using a screen mesh wick heat pipe, the properties of the
working fluid were investegated (Septiadi et al., 2013). They reported
that using nanofluid as the working fluid (Al2O3-water and TiO2-water)
improved the performance of the straight heat pipe with natural cooling.
Loop heat pipe with a composite-material evaporator was proposed (He
et al., 2020) to reduce a heat leak through the evaporator sidewall. They
found that the loop heat pipe with a composite-material evaporator
could operate effectively at heat loads between 10 and 140 W. The
performance of commercial heat pipe with sintered and grooved wick
structures was studied (Atay et al., 2019). They investigated the dryout
characterization of conventional cylindrical heat pipes with sintered and
A. Lashin Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606

Fig. 2. Experimental setup used for studying the performance of the heat pipe.

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Fig. 3. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of one long heat pipe.

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Fig. 4. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of two long heat pipe at different light intensities.

grooved wick structure. They found that, heat pipes with sintered wick
Voc − Vmp
structures perform better in gravity-resisted orientation than grooved Rs = (3)
Imp
heat pipes, but heat pipes with grooved wick structures are more
appropriate for gravity-assisted orientation. The shunt resistance can be calculated form equation (4)(Changmai
et al., 2022):
1 dIsc
1.2. GaInP/GaAs/Ge multijunction CPV cells =− (4)
Rsh dV
Many important factors have significant effect on the choice of PV The fill factor of a solar cell is defined as the ratio of the maximum
cell such as the cell cost, the cooling method and the concentration ratio. amount power obtained to theoretical power as expressed in equation
Crystalline silicon PVs are good choice for low concentration ratios, due (5) (Qu & Li, 2019):
to their low costs, while multijunction or non-silicon PV cells are suit­
Imp Vmp Vmp [ ]
(5)
q
able at high concentration ratios. The multijunction GaInP/GaAs/Ge Fill Factor = = 1 − enkT (Vmp − Voc )
Isc Voc Voc
CPV cells have high efficiencies about 37% under 500 suns illumination
concentration (1 Sun = 1X = 1000 W/m2 ) has been used in this study. The solar cell efficiency (η) is defined as the ratio of the maximum
The operating temperature of the cells is around 100–120 ◦ C, after output power to input power, and is written as in equation (6) (Qu & Li,
which their efficiency decrease (Cotal et al., 2009; King et al., 2009). The 2019; Singh & Ravindra, 2012):
I–V characteristic curve of the multi-junction CPV follows the one diode Imp Vmp
model as in equation (2) η= (6)
Pin .A
[ q(V+IRs ) ] V + IR
(2)
s
I = IL − Is • e nkT − 1 −
Rsh where Pin is the input power, and A: area of the solar cell.
The used CPV cell has a temperature coefficient of − 0.06%/◦ C
where IL is the light current, Is is the reverse saturation current, Rs is the (Kinsey et al., 2009). The temperature dependence of open-circuit
series resistance, Rsh is the shunt resistance, T is absolute temperature, q voltage can be expressed mathematically in equation (7) (Nishioka
is the elementary charge, k is Boltzmann’s constant and n is the diode et al., 2006)
ideality factor. dVoc 1( ( γ ))
(
1 dIsc 1 dVg (T)
)
The short circuit current Isc is obtained at V = 0. =− Vg (T) − Voc + VT 3 + + VT + (7)
dT T 2 Isc dT VT dT
The open circuit voltage Voc is obtained at I = 0.
The maximum output power is obtained at dP/dV = 0. Eg
where VT = kT
q is the thermal voltage, Vg (T) = q is the band gap voltage,
The current and voltage at maximum power Imp &Vmp can be used to
Eg is the absorber band gap, and γ is a constant.
calculate the series resistance as in equation (3) (Koffi et al., 2015):

5
A. Lashin
Fig. 5. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of three long heat pipe at different light intensities.
1.3. CPV/HP coupled system
In photovoltaic cells, some of the absorbed photon energy is turned
to electricity, but most of it is transformed to heat (Abdul Hamid et al.,
2014). The generated heat is removed by thermal conduction to the back
surface of the cell in order to reduce the rise in cell temperature that
would result in a decrease in the conversion efficiency of the cell.
(Wysocki & Rappaport, 1960). Removing the heat flux can be significant
in concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) cells (Martí & Luque, 2003).
Numerous investigations have been conducted to determine the best
effective technique for cooling solar cells operating under concentrated
solar radiation for passive cooling methods, and gaining additional
benefits by utilizing the heat from the solar cell. Active and passive
cooling of an array of CPV was studied (Edenburn, 1980). He showed
that passive cooling becomes more effective as cell size decreases. For an
efficient passive cooling method of a solar cell, To maintain the tem­
perature as low as possible, proper thermal contact between the cell and
the heat-spreading area is essential (Araki et al., 2002). The common
way of cooling by using fins in which fins are attached thermally to the
back of the CPV (Micheli, Fernandez, et al., 2015). Micro-finned heat
sinks were also used as well (Micheli, Senthilarasu, et al., 2015). Ther­
moelectric generator can be used as well for passive cooling the CPV
(Lashin et al., 2019; Sabry et al., 2021). A system dealing with multi­
stage TEG has been investigated using numerical methods and according
to a three-stage thermoelectric module, the author noted that the solar
TEG system’s efficiency may reach 10.52 percent (Xiao et al., 2012).
CPV passive cooling using heat pipes has been used (Anderson et al.,
2008). Different heat pipe approaches for passively cooling the solar
cells have been studied (Akbarzadeh & Wadowski, 1996; Feldman et al.,
1981.), as well as forced air through multiple passages in comparison
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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606
with water flow through a single passage (Florschuetz et al., 1981). They
came to the conclusion that water cooling is more efficient and will
enable customers to employ larger concentration levels.
In this paper, we study the thermal behavior of commercial heat
pipes in horizontal position for passively cooling the concentrated solar
cell. We use two different shapes of heat pipes of the same diameter 6
mm: one of length 250 mm (long heat pipe), and the other has length
150 mm (short heat pipe). The performance of the CPV is compared in
three situations: Fins-cooling, one-long and one-short heat pipe cooling.
2. Experimental setup
Due to their low cost and versatility, commercial heat pipes are
typically preferred by thermal engineers for industrial applications to
disperse hot spots or remove the high heat fluxes. Performance of the
commercial heat pipe in the horizontal position has been tested by using
a setup shown in Fig. 2. Three suitable holes were made in each of the
two copper blocks with the same diameters to that of the heat pipes.
Each block has a small hole to fit a thermocouple for temperatures
recoding. One block is completely exposed to illumination concentra­
tion. An adjustable concentrated light was produced by a Xenon-Lamp
solar simulator. Copper blocks are thermally attached (using thermal
paste with high thermal conducting) to two aluminum blocks with inner
channels, and linked to a water circulator for controlling temperature.
The temperature of water was varied from − 2.5 to 70 ◦ C. The coolant
liquid is a mixture of water and ethylene glycol, and is chosen to reduce
the temperate below zero. The concentrated illumination intensity of the
Xenon-Lamp solar simulator was varied from 50X to 82X (1X =
1000W/m2 ).
After studying the performance of heat pipe, three configurations
A. Lashin
Fig. 6. a 3D graph of the evaporator temperature at the minimum point, the condenser at the same point and the incident intensity of illumination for one-, two-, and
three-long heat pipes.
have been compared: 1) Solar cell cooled by fins in which the back of the
solar cell has been attached thermally (using thermal wax) to an
aluminum heat sink with fins; 2) solar cell attached on the top a copper
block which is linked through a long heat pipe to the second block,
whereas the second block is attached heat sink with fines; and 3) long
heat pipe was replaced by the short one in configuration 2). The heat
pipes were kept horizontally during measurements. Two sets of heat
pipe were used each set contains three heat pipes. In the first set, each
heat pipe is 150 mm long and in the second set, each heat pipe is 250 mm
long. All heat pipes have the same diameter of 6 mm. Controllable
concentrated light is incident only on the cell top surface using a suitable
square diaphragm having the same shape as the solar cell to avoid
irradiating the copper block directly. The concentrated illumination was
varied from 30 to 260 kW/m2, and the cell current and voltage were
recorded accordingly. The electrical terminals of the cell were connected
to a current source for recording the I–V characteristics curves, and the
cell and the condenser temperatures are recorded simultaneously.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Performance of heat pipe
In this part, the performance of heat pipe was tested by changing the
evaporator and condenser temperatures for two main configurations.
The first; uses one, two and three similar heat pipes of length 250 mm.
The second; uses one, two and three similar heat pipes of length 150
mm. All the six heat pipes used in this experiment have the same
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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606
diameter of 6 mm. In our system, the solar cell width is 10 mm side
length and its underlying copper base thickness is about 10 mm. This
makes very hard to use a thicker heat pipe. In each of the studied con­
figurations, the evaporator temperature was changed by changing the
incident light intensity from 50X to 82X. In each input intensity, the
temperature of condenser of the heat pipe is changed from − 2.5◦ C to 70◦
C using a water circulator. Both evaporator and condenser temperatures
were measured at steady state.
Figs. 3–5 show the variation of the evaporator and the condenser
temperatures for one, two and three heat pipes respectively. Fig. 3 dis­
plays the temperature relation between the hot and cold sides of one
long heat pipe (250 mm long) at different light intensities. It is clear that
each curve has a minimum value of Th (the temperature of hot side)
which means that at that point we get the best cooling from the heat
pipe. Moreover, this minimum value increases with the increase of light
intensity as well as the increase of the temperature of the cold side Tc .
Decreasing the temperature of the cold side leads to more removal of
heat at the condenser, which helps in the condensation of the working
liquid and increases the cooling process; this explains why the minimum
value is shifted towards lower temperature as the condenser tempera­
ture decreases and the intensity decreases. By decreasing the tempera­
ture below the best operating point (the minimum point), there is an
increase in the hot side temperature. This may be due to the vapor
pressure limit of the heat pipe. The vapor pressure limit of heat pipe
takes place when a heat pipe operates at temperatures below its normal
operating range and the viscous forces in the working fluid are higher
than the vapor pressure in the evaporator region and this may affect the
A. Lashin Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606

Fig. 7. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of one short heat pipe at different light intensities.

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Fig. 8. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of two short heat pipe at different light intensities.

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A. Lashin
Fig. 9. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of three short heat pipe at different light intensities.
vaporization of the working fluid (Faghri, 2014), beside the capillary
limit which is the most common limit of heat transport in heat pipe. The
capillary limit takes place when there is no enough pumping rate to
provide sufficient liquid to the evaporator section. This is because of the
fact that the sum of the liquid and vapor pressure drops exceed the
maximum capillary pressure that the wick can sustain The main physical
phenomena that limit heat transport in heat pipes are: viscous, sonic,
capillary, entrainment/flooding and boiling. The heat transfer limitation
can be any of these limitations depending on the size and shape of the
pipe, working fluid and operating temperature. Therefore, the temper­
ature of the evaporator increases as the temperature of the cold side
deceases below the minimum point
Figs. 4 and 5 display the temperature evaporator (Th) versus the
temperature of condenser (Tc) of two and three long heat pipes,
respectively. It is clear that the minima are shifted towards the lower
temperature of the evaporator and condenser, which means that the
cooling of using three long heat pipes is better than the cooling of two
long heat pipe, whereas the cooling of two long heat pipe is better than
the cooling of one long heat pipe. But in this situation, more than one
long heat pipe will be effective if we use a high light intensity (high
evaporator temperature) because the best operating point (the minimum
point on the curve) is obtained at low ambient temperature.
Fig. 6 shows a three-dimension graph of the relation between the
evaporator temperature at the minimum point, the condenser at the
same point and the incident intensity of illumination for one-, two-, and
three-long heat pipes (the minimum points in Figs. 3–5). Fortunately, all
the three curves can be fitted to straight lines. From these lines, one can
expect the optimal operating point of the heat pipe at any incident in­
tensity of illumination.
Similar behavior was obtained for the short heat pipe (15 cm length).
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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606
Fig. 7, Fig. 8, and Fig. 9 show the relation between the temperature of
the evaporator and condenser for one-, two- and three-short heat pipes,
respectively.
For comparison, the choice of long or short heat pipe depends on the
temperature range. Short heat pipe is effective at lower temperature
(low evaporator and low condenser temperatures) and long heat pipe is
better in case of high temperature (low evaporator and low condenser
temperatures) as shown Fig. 10.
3.2. Cooling the concentrated photovoltaic cell
In this part, the output of the PV cell was compared for two different
situations: In the first situation, the PV is attached thermally to fins only.
In the second situation, the back of solar cell was attached thermally to a
copper block and this block was linked to a second copper block through
a heat pipe (long or short) the latter block is attached to fins. Figs. 11 and
12 display the relation between maximum output power of the solar cell
and light concentration for a solar cell cooled by fins only, solar cell
cooled by one short heat pipe and fins, and a solar cell cooled by one
long heat pipe and fins. At low light concentration of about 30X to 80 X,
Fig. 11 shows that there was a small difference between cooling the solar
cell with fins and cooling using heat pipe and fines. At an illumination
concentration of about 55 X, a 7% increase in the maximum output
power was obtained by using the short heat pipe and about 6% increase
in the maximum output power for long heat pipe. As mentioned before
the short heat pipe is better at lower light intensity.
At light concentration of about 130–250 X, Fig. 12 shows that there is
a significant difference between cooling the solar cell with fins and
cooling using heat pipes and fins. At light concentration of 210 X, about
12% increase in the output power using by using the short heat pipe and
A. Lashin Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606

Fig. 10. The evaporator temperature (Th) versus the condenser temperature (Tc) of one long and one short at light concentration 82 X

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Fig. 11. Maximum power output as a function of low concentrated illumination for one long and one short heat pipe cooling configurations as well as the only fins-
cooled system.

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A. Lashin
Fig. 12. Maximum power output as a function of high concentrated illumination for one long and one short heat pipe cooling configurations as well as the only fins-
cooled system.
about 16% increase in output power for long heat pipe. The long heat
pipe is preferable at higher light concentrations.
In summary, we studied the thermal performance of a conventional
cylindrical heat pipe. Result shows that there is an optimal operating
point of the heat pipe depends on both the incident intensity and the
condenser temperature. These results are in agreement with the result
obtained by (Alijani et al., 2019).
In our study, the optimal operating points are observed for long
(Figs. 3–5) and short (Figs. 7–9) heat pipes which are located at the
minimum points in the curves. We attributed this behavior seen in the
curves to that: when heat pipe operates, the viscous forces acting on the
liquid during the vapor flow from the evaporator to the condenser is
compensated by the capillary action. If the heat applied to the evapo­
rator pipe exceeds a certain threshold, an equilibrium between capillary
and viscous forces takes place causing the presence of a dry at the
evaporator section (Alijani et al., 2018). According to (Alijani et al.,
2018, 2019), at the dry region the heat pipe still operate and it may not
indicate a catastrophic failure. These dry regions increase the average
temperature of the evaporator section. This is why the curves change
their directions at these points. We are able to predict the optimal
operating temperature at any light intensity (Fig. 6). According to this
study, passive cooling of CPV systems using heat pipes improves the
working parameters of the solar cell. Furthermore, the performance of
the heat pipe-based cooling systems is more significant at high illumi­
nation intensities, which makes this cooling system effective in actual
applications of CPV. There is no significant difference between cooling
with long and short heat pipe but we can conclude that the short heat
pipe is effective in low concentration intensities while long heat pipes
are better at high concentrations.
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Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences 16 (2023) 100606
4. Conclusions
The efficiency of CVP reduces at elevated temperature. Therefore, a
suitable cooling system must be integrated with the CPV. In this study,
passively cooled CPV has been investigated using heat pipes. The heat
pipe thermal performances were tested before coupling with CPV. Re­
sults show that there exist an optimal operating point for each heat pipe
that could be determined for each incident input power. Investigation of
heat pipe cooled systems showed that long heat pipe is more effective
than short heat pipe in case of high concentrated illumination and vise
versa. Next, a heat pipe passive cooled CPV system has been investigated
for both long and short heat pipe systems, and performance was
compared to that of the traditional fins-cooled CPV system. For low
concentrated illumination (55X), the maximum output power of CPV
has been increased by 6% and 7% in case of using the long and the short
heat pipe-cooling respectively compared to the fins-cooled CPV. In
contrary, using high illumination concentration of about 210 X, the
maximum output power of the cell was increased by 16%, 12% corre­
sponding to long and short heat pipe-cooling, respectively.
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