LAUSR

Dust accumulation is one of the reasons for the performance degradation of concentrating photovoltaic and thermal (CPV/T) systems due to the deposition of dust particles with different compositions, shapes, sizes, and masses. In this work, an optical model was developed to investigate the influence of the particle size, diameter, shape, and deposition density on the light concentration efficiency, using the Monte Carlo raytracing (MCRT) method in the Tracepro software. The triangular particles had a larger influence on the light ray deflection and energy flux degradation than the circular and square particles. An average increase in the dust density of 1 g/m2 decreased the light concentration efficiency of particles with sizes smaller than 50 µm and 60 µm by 3.31% and 3.26%, respectively. Furthermore, the effect of the incidence angle on the light concentration efficiency was considered at an angle less than 2°.