Newton, MA, January 15, 2009 – Microfluidics has filed for a patent on its Microfluidics Reaction Technology (MRT), which will enable companies and research organizations to develop and manufacture smaller-sized nanoparticles than previously possible and to do so more efficiently than with other methods.  MRT was presented at the Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) Nanotech 2007 and 2008 conferences and won a Nano 50™ award in 2007 as one of the most innovative ideas that will revolutionize nanotechnology in the near-term and beyond.

The patent covers processors, processes, and applications that are used to produce nanoparticles at high volume, high purity, and low cost.  MRT can also be used for synthesis of fine chemicals through single or multiphase chemical reactions or physical processes such as crystallization. Another key use is process intensification, or combining chemical processes in ways that increase manufacturing efficiency, reduce energy use, and result in purer products.

MRT has a wide range of applications, including production of pharmaceutical nanosuspensions and of nanomaterials that are used for fuel cells and photovoltaics.  It is particularly applicable for those pharmaceutical applications where the trend is to go to very small particles that have precise polymorph control.  Microfluidics has demonstrated MRT by creating nanosuspensions of a variety of injectable or inhalable drugs, including cancer therapies, antibiotics, antihistamines, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, among others. “We used solvent/anti-solvent crystallization, precipitation, or chemical reactions to create these nanosuspensions,” says Dr. Thomai “Mimi” Panagiotou, Microfluidics’ Chief Technology Officer. “We were also able to encapsulate drugs in polymers using the same technique.”

At the core of MRT is a continuous impinging jet microreactor (reaction chamber) with flow rates in liters or tens of liters per minute, capable of mixing the reactants at the nanometer level.  The flow velocities inside the reaction chamber are orders of magnitude higher than that of existing impinging jet designs. Particles are built up molecule by molecule in fractions of a second. The process results in extreme purity of products and creates smaller particles than those ever before achieved. 

Dr. Panagiotou noted “Most technologies that produce nanomaterials rely on ‘top down’ approaches, i.e. breaking large particles into smaller particles.  MRT creates nanoparticles from the ‘bottom up.’ This is a more efficient approach and it can create smaller particles than ‘top down’ methods.  Crystals can be made to a targeted size range with no need for additional micronization, instead of making them and then breaking them down to the desired size.” 

About Microfluidics

Microfluidics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microfluidics International Corporation, is a supplier of advanced fluid-processing equipment and reaction technology for laboratory, pilot-scale, and manufacturing applications. The equipment enables the manufacture and formulation of numerous nanomaterials and nanoscale products, and produces the most uniform and smallest liquid and suspended solid particles available.

Microfluidics has been a worldwide supplier of Microfluidizer® high-shear fluid- processing systems to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetics industries since 1984. As a leader in the field, Microfluidics has enabled numerous companies and institutions to formulate, validate, and produce licensed drugs for the worldwide healthcare market.

Companies seeking to produce difficult-to-formulate products or to find better methods of bioprocessing can take advantage of complimentary sample testing at any of three Microfluidics facilities. Visit www.microfluidicscorp.com, email mixinginfo@mfics.com or contact Microfluidics at 800.370.5452 for application information.

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Theoretical Efficiency of 85%!
Thermal photovoltaics has been around since the 1960s, but it never produced enough power to compete with solar thermal using steam turbines, or more traditional photovoltaic solar panels. However, recent breakthroughs at MTPV Corp. (which stands for Micron-Gap Thermal Photovoltaics, the name of the technology they’re using) supposedly deliver “an order of magnitude” more power than regular thermal photovoltaics.

What’s the difference between conventional solar panel and photovoltaics from thermal photovoltaic systems?

A conventional solar panel absorbs light from the entire spectrum, but it only converts certain colors efficiently. Much of the energy in the other wavelengths of light goes to waste. As a result, the maximum theoretical efficiency of a conventional solar cell is 30 percent, or 41 percent if the sunlight is first concentrated using a mirror or lens. In a thermal photovoltaic system, light is concentrated onto a material to heat it up. The material is selected so that when it gets hot, it emits light at wavelengths that a solar cell can convert efficiently.As a result, the theoretical maximum efficiency of a thermal photovoltaic system is 85 percent.

-Technology Review

Using “micron-gaps” between the heated part and the photovoltaic part (instead of the traditional bigger gaps), they claim to have increased the flow of photons to the solar panel by 10 times compared to traditional TPV technology, which not only makes the whole thing less expensive (coupled with the fact that 1/10 as much solar-cell material as traditional TPV is used), but also lowers its working temperature significantly.

The 85% efficiency theoretical figure mentioned above is of course very hard to reach, but MTPV’s computer models show that 50% efficiency should be possible. So far the company has reached 10 to 15%, which is similar to many other solar panels on the market (not bad). With a bit more progress (it probably hasn’t been getting much R&D effort compared to silicon and thin film solar cells), this technology could become a big player in the solar power world.

Via Technology Review, MTPV

Finlayson and co-workers have presented an amazing work in the area of organic photovoltaics. They have blended a perylene-substituted polyisocyanide  — instead of a regular low molecular weight perylene — with polythiophene- and polyfluorene-based conjugated polymers. As it turns out, this approach led to an order of magnitude improvement in power conversion efficiency.

But read yourself at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ma801959w

As we all eagerly wait for Barack Obama’s inauguration and the second coming of alternative energy, a new play has been spinning through my mind. In the wastes of the Tata Nano debacle, there is a new opportunity for West Bengal,India. Despite it’s reputation for militant trade unionism and long years of communist rule(and the stereotype that all Bengalis are Red), Bengal has a number of things going for it which may yet raise it from the economic dead.

Firstly, it has land that is not productive from an agricultural perspective,  secondly it has a coastline and thirdly it has a strong base of education. But above all, in CESC, it has an established player in the power sector which has shown the way to success in the utility business-not many others in India can claim that. In the districts of Bankura, Birbhum and Purulia, the land remains largely barren and the population is spread thinly. This can be ideal for windfarm creation. The moment you move away from the crowded areas of the 24-Parganas, Midnapore and Nadia, you have plenty of land and some people, mainly poor. I see no reason why these people would mind extra money in terms of employment and downstream ancillary services and industries. Secondly, around Midnapore and other seaboard areas, it is a well known fact that saltwalter floods and erosion are gradually making land unarable. This is anecdotal evidence-I am sure any researcher will bear me out. Is it possible to look at putting wind turbines offshore and harvesting the power? Thirdly, the use of thermal solar should be seriously contemplated in a state that is, well, sunny for so many months. Fourth, CESC and DVC between the two of them have a base of knowledge, experience and well-established power grids which can be used to ship  this power. How long will we see fossil fuel being used and mega hydel projects killing off rivers ? India is a energy hungry market and there is no reason for Bengal not to export green power.

So who would invest in all of these? I see Singapore’s thrust in the area of green energy and it’s uniquely Asian perspective coming in handy here. There has already been an indication of closer cooperation through the Durgapur Aeropolis. Maybe it is time to start thinking ahead to a deeper engagement.

Did you know that most of the households pay thousands of dollars every year for electricity bills to electricity generation companies? The entire picture is going to change now! As you can easily choose to generate energy from renewable resources inexpensively, which consists of energy generation from homemade Wind or Solar Energy generation systems. Electricity production going cleaner and a lot cheaper with the efforts of researchers, as they make it happen to getting over the fears that renewable energy generation resources quoted with big price tags. Thanks to experts many people now successfully producing electricity for homes with their businesses. Let’s have a quick review.

Solar Panels at Home

Sun is the greatest source of heat and energy. You can avail the benefit from this huge energy source by using the free solar power based home made power plant, that convert the sun energy into electricity, through Solar Panels. The electricity that you can easily produce will be enough to power most of your household needs and also the need of the small to medium businesses, all without any regular payments!

Solar panels collect and convert the sun energy into electricity using photovoltaic cells. Don’t worry! The word photovoltaic literally mean “light”(photo) “electricity” (voltaic). You can get all what you need from do it yourself steps to start building your solar plant here.

Home Wind Turbine

Wind turbine farms have been widely used now to generate electricity through the energy of the wind. Many new businesses have been emerged lately those start selling the wind energy, those they built in bulk and this has proved as a profitable model for them, but NOT for You!

Why anyone has to pay? When you can now build and install your own home wind turbine easily, with the help of a complete System, like the one found here.

Related Links:

www.energygeneration.info

Renewable Energy Resources – Top 3 Consumer rated

Livinintheloin, work in Emeryville, and always on the lookout for green. This is the first living roof that I have seen outside of The City –Academy of Science, and the living bus stop in front of The Asian Museum of Art.

The living roof  “tops” the west elm, by the IKEA in Emeryville. The entire surface of the curved rooftop is covered in what looks like native grasses. You can’t see it in the pic., but the stucco surface of the building is covered with a very minimal lattice — ripe for planting climbing vines. “The project integrates a green roof, photovoltaics, rainwater catchments, high-performance building envelope, skylights, bioswells and living walls.” [ddimagazine.com] Whoa!

More information on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

Eco Living Magazine presents:

Heading: Sustainable Dream Home

Building and renovating an energy efficient home.

By Libe Chacos

Even Hobart in Tasmania, which has the lowest level of sun of all of Australia’s capital cities, has more than double the average sun hours that much of Germany has, whose long term goal is for a quarter of their electricity to be solar generated.

Intro: Imagine living in a home that stays between 16-24°C all year round and paying just $2 per day for all your heating and cooling costs.  It is easier than you think… but only after you abandon what most people ‘know’ about energy efficient and sustainable homes and follow the simple steps that work 100% of the time, in every style of home, and in every climate.

Ordinary people in ‘apparently ordinary’ homes across the country have already cut 41% and more off their electricity bills, 56% off their homes CO2 emissions, and saved hundreds of litres of water every day. We are all feeling the pressure: electricity prices are going up; petrol prices are going up – add interest rate pressure to that. Your dream home has a place in all of this. This is how.

Maybe you have already read some books, done some surfing on the internet and gone to sites that claim they can help you save water and electricity… Then they tell you to turn the power point off at the wall when you have finished watching TV and have 4 minute showers.

Well those changes are valid and do work, but there is definitely more to it than that. Besides, if you are not one of those people who is able to enjoy a massage every week or so, then a 15 minute shower may be your only escape from the kids, work and stress of every day life.

I’m sure that you are probably aware of some of the obvious fundamentals of energy efficient housing:

P   Lots of Windows to let the sun in to warm you up in winter

P   Insulate the walls and ceilings

P   Use energy efficient appliances

But there are houses being built like this all across the country, and they simply aren’t comfortable to live in. They still need lots of heating and cooling. So what’s the answer then? How do you create a home that is energy efficient, affordable, and comfortable; and one that you can happily have a guilt free spa in?

By following fundamentals and applying them where it counts the most in your home. Though people already follow these principles, but so many don’t  – next time you go for a walk around your neighbourhood, just have a look at how many solar hot water panels there are on the roof tops. Most people know that solar hot water is good for the environment and saves energy. Around 30% of the average Australian electricity bill is taken up by heating your hot water. New evacuated tube solar hot water systems will save around 70% of those costs and more for most Australians.

Now if you live in the shade of a neighbouring building or hill side then you can still save up to 75% off your hot water bills with another great Australian invention: The heat pump hot water system. They work like a reverse cycle air conditioner, and save heaps of energy on your hot water bills.  There are a range of brands to choose from, with two options being from Quantum and Siddons. Although, generally speaking the most effective savings in CO2 emissions are gained with a solar hot water system with a gas back up (for when the sun doesn’t shine). These types of savings will literally put money back into your hip pocket. If you invest in the right unit, it will work financially for you as well as environmentally. I have no interest in selling you a particular model… I’m just sharing what I’ve learnt. I just want you to save money and have a lighter eco footprint.

Did you know that Melbourne gets as much sunshine as the south of Spain and parts of Northern Africa? And most of the country receives more sunshine than Melbourne. Solar power is here now and readily available. We know it works and you can simply buy and have installed a ‘plug and play’ system and continue on with your life as though nothing has changed. There are literally thousands of houses across Australia that are totally solar powered.

What are Photovoltaics?

There is a difference between solar hot water systems and solar power panels – photovoltaics. Put simply, a photovoltaic is a material that is capable of generating electricity when exposed to light.

Is there enough sunshine?

In less than 2 hours of daylight the sun provides us with the amount of energy that is consumed by the entire population of the planet in one year. Even Hobart in Tasmania, which has the lowest level of sun of all of Australia’s capital cities, has more than double the average sun hours that much of Germany has, whose long term goal is for a quarter of their electricity to be solar generated.

Is it really cost effective?

There are four major contributing factors to cost effective solar power: How much sun you receive, the cost of the solar power system, the price you pay for electricity and how much electricity you use.

“…with this new $8,000 rebate when you do the sums, it turns out that if you’re in Alice Springs, Darwin and Perth, you are now economically advised to go and get a solar panel, because the price of electricity from your solar panel will be comparable with the daytime retail electricity price.” Professor Andrew Blakers, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, at the ANU in Canberra.

Perth receives a similar amount of sun hours to Adelaide, Sydney and cost effective, Brisbane; and Canberra is not far behind. Professor Blakers made these calculations before the latest hikes in electricity prices, so the costs are even more favourable now for more of Australia.

The key to the system being cost effective is to ensure that your home is designed and built to be energy efficient. To make solar power more cost effective for your home use natural gas for cooking; solar (including heat pump) hot water systems; passive solar designs and insulation for heating and cooling and an energy efficient fridge. These practices will make the initial cost of your photovoltaic system much more manageable and your return on investment healthier.

To make your home truly sustainable with solar power the following steps will help:

When you are replacing your appliances, choose energy efficient ones.

Replace your light globes with compact fluorescents

Replacing hot water systems with solar or heat pump hot water units.

Improve your insulation and windows

Use skylights effectively to warm and cool your home.

Then you can more cost effectively add photovoltaics to your home and get a real return on your dollar.

What about saving water?

You know the story: “we love a sunburnt country… droughts and flooding plains…” We know that we live in the driest inhabited continent on the planet. And we know that when it rains – it pours. This is not new information; but if you get the chance to have a look at the Bureau of Meteorology website statistics for your area, you’ll likely see some worrying signs for rainfall trends. As a result in many areas it is now mandatory to include a rain water tank when you build a new home. But how big should it be and what else can you do?

Reduce; Reuse; Recycle. Always the best place to start is to reduce. You’ve seen the ads on TV, but they don’t really explain why in this order. The good thing about water is that reusing is recycling and it is safe and easy to do.

Nearly half of all water consumed in the home is used in the bathroom. 20% of that water is literally flushed down the toilet. Now if you’re unsure where to invest money in the current climate here’s a good idea for a tax free return on your investment:

It is now mandatory that every tap sold in Australia is water saving. By buying more water-efficient products, you can save money on water and electricity bills and help the environment. Look for a product that has a high star rating – the more stars, the more water efficient the product. A standard 3-star rated showerhead can save the average home $150 a year in water bills and can be purchased for as little as $50. I’m going to say it again: If you invest your money in the right place to be sustainable and eco-friendly – you will get a financial benefit.

Saving water in the shower…

Showerheads with a 3-star rating use no more than 9 litres of water per minute, while old style showerheads use 15 – 20 litres per minute. If you shower for ten minutes, a water efficient showerhead can save up to 100 litres of water for each shower or up to 36,000 litres of water per person per year. With that amount of water saving you can comfortably have a guilt free spa bath! You can see how it starts to add up. OK we’ve reduced our consumption with water saving showerheads and dual flush toilets.

Now to reuse and recycle – the first step is a water tank. You will collect 1 litre of water for every square metre of roof area every time 1mm of rain falls on your roof. For example, if your home is 200m² and you get 10mm of rain overnight, your tank will catch 2000 litres of water. If you get 60mm of rain in a month then you will capture 12,000 litres (60mm x 200m2). What most people tend to forget is that we want the water more when it’s not raining, so if you have a rainwater tank you want to make sure it can store enough water for a dry spell.

On average, people use around 200L of water a day at home. For a family of four, that’s 800 litres of water a day. If you want to be self sufficient in your water supply, and it doesn’t rain for 30 days at your place then you need 4 x 200 x 30 (4 people x 200 litres x 30 days) = 24,000 litres of storage capacity.

The good news is you can safely recycle most of the water that gets used at home and put it to good use. An easy way to save water is to recycle it. Statistics tell us that in the average urban home we use 25% of our water on the garden. If you water your garden with a sprinkler for just one hour that’s as much as 1000 litres of water! A grey water system will recycle water from your shower (or spa!).  Attaching a grey water system to your shower, laundry tub or spa can be a great way to recycle – generate sufficient water supply for gardens, a great vegie patch, whatever water restriction levels apply! Grey water systems can be purchased from most plumbing stores. Check with your local council to confirm what requirements need to be met and systems should be installed by a licensed plumber.

So by taking the first step and reducing the amount of water you use – by installing water saving taps, dual flush toilets, using drip irrigation instead of hoses, watering the lawn at the right time of day so you don’t lose half to evaporation – you dramatically lessen the water storage requirements to be self sufficient, so you can invest in a smaller rainwater tank to get the same outcome. All without a change in lifestyle.

All it requires is a few subtle changes: the differences that make the difference. The Master Builders Association research tells us that buildings in Australia are responsible for 42% of our emissions. We know we all have a responsibility to save water and reduce our emissions. What you haven’t been told up till now is how easy it is to do!  (Libe Chacos has over 18 years experience in the sustainable building industry and produces manuals on the best way to build a sustainable dream home. See book reviews page 106-8 for more info on these guides).

Breakout box:

Heading: Tips for a happy, healthy hot tub…

1. Go for an ‘all-in-one’ installation – these have the heater and pump built in under the spa. This shortens the distance the water has to travel, which means that the water stays warmer and takes less gas to keep it at the desired temperature. Better for the environment and easier on the wallet. They are much easier to install and maintain too.
2. If you are having the heater/pump separate, try and have the water pipes insulated. If they pass through the ground the water will lose a lot of heat, making the unit less efficient and more expensive to run.
3. Use your hot tub daily? Make sure you keep the cover on as this helps the water stay warm and is quicker to heat up next time you use it.
4. If your spa is under a roof, consider installing a water tank. You can use this to refill or top up the hot tub (and water the garden) instead of using the mains water.
5. Avoid showering before getting in the spa – the soap residue on your skin (and bathing suit) can make the water ‘frothy’ and affect the chemical balance.
6. Try using a natural product to clean your spa to avoid the weekly pH tests and exposure to noxious chemicals. You won’t have wash to off that nasty chlorine afterwards. It’s just like having a nice hot bath and saves you water.
7. If your hot tub is a few years old, it’s important to flush out your pumps plumbing as there can be chemical & mineral build up. Chose a natural spa treatment; this can eliminate this clogging in your pipes.
8. Natural products are a great alternative to harsh chemicals - there is less maintenance involved and you can dump the water on your lawn or garden. Chemicals can kill your grass or plants, and definitely can’t be used on a veggie patch. This means it has to go down the drain – what a waste!
9. Live in a sunny area like Queensland? Consider solar hot water heating for your hot tub. This is a virtually ‘free’ way to heat your water & will keep it nice and toasty all year round.

©Eco Living Magazine.

Eco Living Magazine

Emag

Midas Word

Where would be the best place to get an update of solar energy conversion, and photovoltaics in particular? That would be in a classroom, where you can ask questions and sort through the multiple topics of materials, sources of photovoltaic action (drift, diffusion, electrokinetic phenomena), and the difference between a cell, module, and an array. You would also be able to see that PV is only a tiny segment of an otherwise broad portfolio of technologies to make use of the sun for heating, cooling, making chemicals, making electricity from turbines, and so on. I offer two core courses at Penn State that deal with these subjects, but obviously there is a larger audience out there that would like information. Thankfully, we will be producing a web-based course dealing with photovoltaics, but that will be about a year off.

Therefore, I would recommend two web-based books for the curious, right now! The first is an educational project that began as an international collaboration between the University of Delaware and the University of New South Wales, funded by an IGERT grant. The site is called Photovoltaics: Devices, Systems and Applications CD-ROM, and the authors are Christiana Honsberg and Stuart Bowden. This includes interactive diagrams, movie clips of the silicon manufacture process, and a good review of solar energy. You will need to download Shockwave from Adobe. Up until recently, the Shockwave addition did not work for Macintosh systems, so I was more hesitant at recommending the site. But now: go for it! You will be busy for weeks. Note that the site is dedicated to silicon devices, and will not provide a comprehensive description of thin film PV devices and the principles of operation. That being said, the site is a gem.

The second book is not as web savvy, but does contain fantastic fundamental information on solar energy conversion. The resource is Power from the Sun by by William B. Stine and Michael Geyer, at California State Polytechnic University in the USA and IEA SolarPACES in Spain. This text is more like the classic paper text by John Duffie and William Beckman: Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes,¹ in which multiple solar energy conversion technologies are described.

There you go, solar energy enthusiasts! Go to school and get informed on solar energy. But if you are tied up with other things (like life), in the mean time do some winter reading and find out how much potential solar energy has as a sustainable technology!

1. Duffie, J. A.; Beckman, W. A. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes. (3rd Ed.) 2006 John Wiley & Sons Inc, Hoboken, NJ, USA.

Let’s talk about light interacting with a semiconductor to yield electricity. Today’s topic is to distinguish between low levels of irradiance and high levels of irradiance. Effectively, we are asking for an estimate of the concentration of photons being delivered from a high energy source to a low energy absorber/collector.

When we say low levels of irradiance, we are estimating a scale of light concentration that is typical of the diffuse and direct component of unconcentrated “global” or “total” solar radiation, or the light from a standard incandescent lamp or fluorescent lamp. This could be anywhere <1000 mW/cm², or 10x the sun’s concentration (remember, this is just a crude scale, not a hard and fast rule–don’t take this back to your classes). The standard for testing solar cells inside the earth’s atmosphere is called Air Mass 1.5 Global (AM 1.5G), because the light from the sun passes through 1.5 lengths of a generic Earth’s atmosphere to generate a convenient irradiance of ~ 100 mW/cm². Low levels of light such as this provide a sufficient number of photons (packets of light) to excite the electrons into an unoccupied level of energy (the conduction band). However, the population distribution of the majority carriers does not change significantly. That’s okay: the key player in a photovoltaic absorber is the minority carrier (n-type semiconductor: a hole; p-type semiconductor: an electron), and the population of minority carriers does change significantly with light absorption. Minority carrier transport gets the job done, in fact, because they are the limiting rate in the absorber reactor. You can find out more about charge carriers and carrier transport in the Photovoltaics CDROM from Honsberg and Bowden, Chapter 3 (although it doesn’t work completely for Macs, sadly)

What is high irradiance? You’ve heard the warnings about strong lasers pointing into others’ eyes? A laser is a coherent, collimated light source (the photons’ waves are in phase and heading the same direction), such that the photons can be very concentrated. If sufficient numbers of photons are absorbed by a semiconductor, the population of photoexcited charge carriers can be much greater than the majority carriers, and there a population inversion occurs, leading to stimulated emission (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

The photons from light bulbs and suns are neither coherent nor collimated, although they can be concentrated significantly to potentially cause a population inversion and stimulated emission (yes, there is the possibility for a solar laser). However, before that stage there are other phenomena that occur, making it a bit more complicated.

Concentrating cells allow an increased flux of photons to the smaller receiver/absorber using a larger aperture to collect the solar light. The geometric concentration ratio is the ratio of the area of an aperture to that of the absorber (C=A_apt/A_abs).^1,2 For a perfect concentrator (as a point on the surface of Earth), the radiation from the Sun on the aperture-receiver assembly is only a fraction of the total radiation emitted by the Sun, given a half-angle subtended by the Sun of 0.27°. Assuming a blackbody, the absorber would have a maximum theoretical concentration ratio of 45,000 (for a circular concentrator) or 212 (for a linear,trough concentrator).¹ The higher the concentration,the higher the photon flux (including increasing temperature),and the more precise the optics of the collector must be to deliver. This is an extreme energy flux for any semiconductor. Under high illumination levels, one will observe a decrease in minority carrier lifetimes and related diffusion path lengths. However, 45.6% of the suns power is contained in the infrared band (the part that makes things “hot”). Thermally, an imaging concentrator (C>> 10; analogous to camera lenses) can produce temperatures from 500 to 1500 °C at the absorber.² This increased temperature can be used to drive thermal work (steam generation) or thermophotoelectrochemical reactions for concentrating solar power (CSP, not to be confused with CPV), but is not necessarily good for photovoltaic performance. High temperatures tend to decrease the efficiency of a photovoltaic device. In particular, this is why members of the microelectronics industry are getting into the concentrating photovoltaics field (CPV)–they know how to cool superhot microelectronics, and will do the same with CPV devices.

It is so interesting to see how this is all a great spread of possibilities that one can derive from our nearest fusion reactor!

Text sources:
1. Rabl, A. Active Solar Collectors and Their Applications. 1985 Oxford University Press, New York

2. Duffie, J. A.; Beckman, W. A. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes. (3rd Ed.) 2006 John Wiley & Sons Inc, Hoboken, NJ, USA.

3. Andreev, V. M.; Grilikhes, V. A.; Rumyantsev, V. D. Photovoltaic Conversion of Concentrated Sunlight. 1997, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, England.