Concentrated solar energy applications using Fresnel lenses: A review

Solar energy concentration technology using Fresnel lens is an effective way to make full use of sunlight. This paper makes a review about the recent development of the concentrated solar energy applications using Fresnel lenses. The ongoing research and development involves imaging systems and non-imaging systems. Compared with imaging systems, non-imaging systems have the merits of larger accept angles, higher concentration ratios with less volume and shorter focal length, higher optical efficiency, etc. Concentrated photovoltaics is a major application and the highest solar-to-electric conversion efficiency based on imaging Fresnel lens and non-imaging Fresnel lens are reported as over 30% and 31.5 ± 1.7%, respectively. Moreover, both kinds of systems are widely used in other fields such as hydrogen generation, photo-bio reactors as well as photochemical reactions, surface modification of metallic materials, solar lighting and solar-pumped laser. During the recent two decades, such applications have been built and tested successfully to validate the practicality of Fresnel lens solar concentration systems. Although the present application scale is small, the ongoing research and development works suggest that Fresnel lens solar concentrators, especially non-imaging Fresnel lenses, will bring a breakthrough of commercial solar energy concentration application technology in the near future. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of two systems are also summarized.