Robert Taylor, a Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering at Arizona State University, and his colleagues have used graphite nanoparticles to improve the performance and effectiveness of solar plants. The width of the graphite nanoparticles is 1000 times lesser than that of a human hair.
Robert Taylor has stated that the major drawback of photovoltaic panels is that they can utilize barely a small portion of the sunlight that strikes them, and the remaining portion of sunlight gets converted into heat, affecting the functioning of the panels.
Solar thermal collector is a good substitute that can make use of the entire sunlight striking on it. These collectors are developed in several shapes like dishes, panels, vacuum tubes and towers. Their purpose is to absorb heat that generates steam by boiling water, to operate a turbine to generate power.
In order to further enhance the competence of solar collectors, Taylor and his team combined nanoparticles with heat-transfer oils that are generally utilized in solar thermal power plants. They selected graphite nanoparticles, since black color allows maximum absorption of sunlight, making graphite nanoparticles effective collectors of heat.
The engineers conducted lab experiments with small dish collectors and they established that nanoparticles improved the heat-absorption competency by around 10%. This improved efficiency can probably increase the revenue to $3.5 million dollars every year for a solar power plant generating 100 megawatt of electricity.
Taylor mentioned that graphite nanoparticles involve less cost and 100 g of graphite nanoparticles can offer similar heat-absorbing surface area as a football playing area. He added that nanoparticles made of soot have similar heat absorbing capacity and they can be filtered out from thermal power plants for utilizing in solar devices, thereby using a contaminant to generate clean solar energy.
This research article titled, ‘Applicability of nanofluids in high flux solar collectors’ was published in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.
Source: http://www.asu.edu