Investigation on Optical Properties and Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency of Spectral Splitting PV/T system.

Abstract This paper taken SiO 2 nanofluid spectral splitting PV/T system on as the object of the research, considering the effects of scattering, the Mie scattering theory combined with Monte Carlo Ray Tracing (Tracepro software) method was developed to study optical properties and solar energy conversion efficiency with SiO 2 nanofluid volume fraction and particle diameter. It is found that with the diameter of the nanoparticle is 5 nm, the spectral transmittance does not change with the increasing volume fraction, and the scattering effect of the nanofluid can be neglected, while the diameter of the nanoparticle is larger than 15 nm, the spectral transmittance change greatly, and the scattering needs to be considered; with the volume fraction and the diameter of SiO 2 nanofluids becoming larger, the total energy absorbed by the photothermal conversion of nanofluid increase slightly, so the scattering of SiO 2 nanofluid have minor effect on photothermal conversion of PV/T system, while the photoelectric conversion efficiency reduce because of the increasing scattering coefficient, which made total solar energy conversion efficiency reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]