{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44127"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44127","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Optimization of luminescent solar concentrators","abstract":"The growing demands on energy have brought forth the necessity of improving the efficiencies of renewable energy harvesting. Solar industry is one of the main sectors in which cutting edge research is done to facilitate this improvement. Luminescent Solar Concentrators (LSCs) are part of this effort. They are used to improve the incident light influx into the solar cell with the help of a polymer matrix with luminescent dye molecules. These systems offer an opportunity for increased power generation without the use of complex and expensive components. Therefore, for enabling effective widespread use of solar power, a method for designing optimal LSCs is required such that the advantages of concentrators can be utilized and the energy losses are minimized. In this work, a methodology for the analysis and optimization of LSC designs is given. This procedure begins with the computational modeling of LSC system based on Diffusion Approximation (DA). Then, the physics model is subjected to an optimization algorithm based on Globally Convergent Method of Moving Asymptotes (GCMMA). For this optimization, the objective function is the integrated flux on the solar cell and the design variable is the absorption coefficient of the dye which in turn gives the spatial dye distribution in the polymer matrix. The proposed method gives a computationally inexpensive but robust optimization for the LSC designs. The proposed method is applied to various test cases to understand and design effective LSCs. The test cases consist of models with varying number of dimensions, constraints,absorption–emission cycles, and cell placements. With the results obtained, qualitative trends regarding spatial dye distribution in LSC systems and the corresponding improvements in performance were studied.","abstract_html":"The growing demands on energy have brought forth the necessity of improving the efficiencies of renewable energy harvesting. Solar industry is one of the main sectors in which cutting edge research is done to facilitate this improvement. Luminescent Solar Concentrators (LSCs) are part of this effort. They are used to improve the incident light influx into the solar cell with the help of a polymer matrix with luminescent dye molecules. These systems offer an opportunity for increased power generation without the use of complex and expensive components. Therefore, for enabling effective widespread use of solar power, a method for designing optimal LSCs is required such that the advantages of concentrators can be utilized and the energy losses are minimized. In this work, a methodology for the analysis and optimization of LSC designs is given. This procedure begins with the computational modeling of LSC system based on Diffusion Approximation (DA). Then, the physics model is subjected to an optimization algorithm based on Globally Convergent Method of Moving Asymptotes (GCMMA). For this optimization, the objective function is the integrated flux on the solar cell and the design variable is the absorption coefficient of the dye which in turn gives the spatial dye distribution in the polymer matrix. The proposed method gives a computationally inexpensive but robust optimization for the LSC designs. The proposed method is applied to various test cases to understand and design effective LSCs. The test cases consist of models with varying number of dimensions, constraints,absorption–emission cycles, and cell placements. With the results obtained, qualitative trends regarding spatial dye distribution in LSC systems and the corresponding improvements in performance were studied.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Ismail, Nishana"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"M.S.","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Mechanical Engineering","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Johnson, Harley T."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2013,"date_issued":"2013-05-24T21:51:32Z","date_published":"2013-05-24T21:51:32Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:33Z","subjects":["Luminescent solar concentrators","optimization","solar concentrators"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2013 Nishana Ismail"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44127","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Johnson, Harley T."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Ismail, Nishana"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2013-05-24T21:51:32Z","2013-05"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Mechanical Engineering"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["M.S."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Luminescent solar concentrators","optimization","solar concentrators"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2013 Nishana Ismail"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44127"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["The growing demands on energy have brought forth the necessity of improving the efficiencies of renewable energy harvesting. Solar industry is one of the main sectors in which cutting edge research is done to facilitate this improvement. Luminescent Solar Concentrators (LSCs) are part of this effort. They are used to improve the incident light influx into the solar cell with the help of a polymer matrix with luminescent dye molecules. These systems offer an opportunity for increased power generation without the use of complex and expensive components. Therefore, for enabling effective widespread use of solar power, a method for designing optimal LSCs is required such that the advantages of concentrators can be utilized and the energy losses are minimized. In this work, a methodology for the analysis and optimization of LSC designs is given. This procedure begins with the computational modeling of LSC system based on Diffusion Approximation (DA). Then, the physics model is subjected to an optimization algorithm based on Globally Convergent Method of Moving Asymptotes (GCMMA). For this optimization, the objective function is the integrated flux on the solar cell and the design variable is the absorption coefficient of the dye which in turn gives the spatial dye distribution in the polymer matrix. The proposed method gives a computationally inexpensive but robust optimization for the LSC designs. The proposed method is applied to various test cases to understand and design effective LSCs. The test cases consist of models with varying number of dimensions, constraints,absorption–emission cycles, and cell placements. With the results obtained, qualitative trends regarding spatial dye distribution in LSC systems and the corresponding improvements in performance were studied.","Item withdrawn by Mark Zulauf (zulauf@illinois.edu) on 2013-04-25T14:06:47Z Item was in collections: University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1) No. of bitstreams: 1 Ismail_Nishana.pdf: 5930472 bytes, checksum: 098a6ae0858e80868e5facbccb79ca83 (MD5)","Made available in DSpace on 2013-05-24T21:51:32Z (GMT). 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Therefore, for enabling effective widespread use of solar power, a method for designing optimal LSCs is required such that the advantages of concentrators can be utilized and the energy losses are minimized. In this work, a methodology for the analysis and optimization of LSC designs is given. This procedure begins with the computational modeling of LSC system based on Diffusion Approximation (DA). Then, the physics model is subjected to an optimization algorithm based on Globally Convergent Method of Moving Asymptotes (GCMMA). For this optimization, the objective function is the integrated flux on the solar cell and the design variable is the absorption coefficient of the dye which in turn gives the spatial dye distribution in the polymer matrix. The proposed method gives a computationally inexpensive but robust optimization for the LSC designs. The proposed method is applied to various test cases to understand and design effective LSCs. 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