Author(s)

Intissar Benrhouma¹, Nabil Ben Hafsia¹, Bechir Chaouachi¹, Marta Victoria², Ignacio Anton²

¹Energy, Water, Environment and Process Analysis Laboratory, National Engineering School of Gabes, University of Gabes, Gabes, Tunisia.
²Instituto de Energía Solar, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaría, Madrid, Spain.

The objective of this present study is to manufacture a new silicone-based adhesive which is used for gluing and bonding the second optical elements (SOE) with Concentrating Photovoltaic solar cell (CPV) in order to guarantee a thickness that can provide a good silicone adherence to obtain long term stability and keeping a good solar transmittance performance, too. This new adhesive is made up of a mixture of silicone and transparent glass balls. The experimental part consists of the choice of the best size of glass balls with the suitable proportion of the glass balls weight in the mixture. For this purpose, ten samples were manufactured for every category of glass balls and weight ratio. Glass ball sizes between 100 and 1100 μm, and weight ratios between 1 and 10% were analyzed. For each category of glass balls, four proportions were mixed with the silicone. The thicknesses and transmittance of every sample were measured with appropriate instruments. The experimental results illustrate that the mixture containing balls with sizes inferior to 106 μm, is the best mixture which assures adhesive minimum thickness value necessary for an efficient mechanical bond and preserves also a good transmittance of solar irradiance.

Secondary Optical Elements (SOE), Concentrating Photovoltaic Solar Cell (CPV), New Adhesive, Thickness, Transmittance

Benrhouma, I. , Hafsia, N. , Chaouachi, B. , Victoria, M. and Anton, I. (2021) Performance Improving of a Concentrating Photovoltaic System by Using a New Optical Adhesive. Journal of Modern Physics, 12, 1607-1617. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2021.1212095.