Elastocaloric cooler for waste heat recovery from perovskite solar cell with electricity and cooling production

To realize sufficient use of incident sunlight, a novel coupled system involving a perovskite solar cell (PSC) and an elastocaloric cooler (ECC) is established, with the ECC applied to thermally utilize the portion of long wavelength photons unconverted by the PSC. A theoretical model of the proposed system is developed, taking into account various irreversible losses, from which the availability and efficiency of the system is tested. Mathematical expressions for the key performance indicators of the subsystem and coupled system are deduced, and the numerical calculations indicate that the peak output power and its corresponding efficiency of the coupled system are improved by 23.25% and 23.17% compared to the stand-alone PSC, respectively. Furthermore, comprehensive sensitivity analyses are undertaken to derive the effects of critical designing parameters and operating conditions on the overall performance, including operating temperature, perovskite layer thickness, length ratio, Young's modulus ratio, Clausius-Clapeyron coefficient ratio, and the transformation strain ratio. The findings of this study may offer some guidelines for further improving PSC properties with cogeneration technology.