3D printing of solar cells

louis · 2016-05-10 06:47:51

Mention was made elsewhere that it would be difficult to manufacture PV panels on Mars. However this article suggests that it might be easier than one would think.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20150629- … areas.html

At least, there is no reason why one couldn't have a 3D printer transported to Mars.

The issue then is probably how do we provide the materials for the 3D printer. Here is a description of the purification process for creatine PV grade silicon:

http://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/manu … ng-silicon

We might have to concentrate CO2 from the atmosphere and then separate off the carbon.

Here's one method:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/5407 … f-from-it/

Glass or polymer production would also be required.

It would be complex but with the right imported machines, I think a fairly small Mars community - let's say perhaps 50 plus people could have the resources to manufacture PV cells directly without having to import them from Earth.

This would enable the colony to grow more quickly.

The great thing about small 3D printers is that you can keep expanding. After a while you can bring in 3D printers to print most of the parts for a 3D PV panel printer, so eventually you hardly need to import anything from Earth in order to produce electricity generation facilities on Mars.

Antius · 2016-05-10 08:58:35

Good post. Native solar power is certainly a lot easier than hauling your energy source from Earth at a cost of millions of dollars per tonne.

But I would suggest that solar power is easier on Mars than it is on Earth and can be done using a simpler method than PV. On Earth, the temperature changes between day and night are small in most places, so solar power tends to rely on PV as we cannot exploit solar thermal power efficiently without massive reflective mirrors that follow the sun. And in many places, cloud cover and the lack of direct sunlight makes this approach completely impractical. Unfortunately that includes most of the northern hemisphere where most of world’s energy demand is concentrated.

The situation couldn’t be more different on Mars. At night, the temperature drops to -120C even at the equator in summer. The atmosphere is almost perfectly transparent to IR radiation. During day, the temperature swings upwards to anywhere between 20C and -50C. So temperature swing is huge – much greater than anywhere on Earth. Simply by storing day time heat and night time cold in reservoirs you can power a thermodynamic cycle at typical power plant efficiencies. You don’t need PV arrays, just a polymer hose pipe beneath the soil capable of collecting and dumping heat between the huge temperature swings. The cold can be stored as solid or liquid CO2. The hot can be stored in the latent heat of melting of brine.

So the things needed are plastic pipes, tanks to store the water and dry ice and some kind of prime-mover, either a turbine or piston driven device. The solar collector is the soil itself with a hose running underneath.

End uses can be simplified by cutting out electric power entirely. Mechanical tools can be driven by simple compressed gas rather than complex electric motors. You could manufacture these at your base, rather than importing them.

A similar approach would work on the moon and asteroids, but would likely use solid storage media rather than brine and gas.

GW Johnson · 2016-05-10 09:36:36

A solar thermal heat engine is an interesting concept. The Carnot efficiency eC of such a thing depends only upon the available hot and cold reservoir temperatures. Let's see now, cold at -120 C = 153 K, and hot at, say 0 C = 273 K. So, eC = 1 - Tc/Th = 0.44 or thereabouts, which is an upper bound that cannot be approached too closely with real equipment. The actual energy conversion efficiency is likely going to be half to three quarters of Carnot, say around 25 to 30%. That's definitely better than 6 to 25% for solar PV. Therefore, good idea!

GW

SpaceNut · 2016-05-10 17:36:48

Loius for, The first link for mars would generate only 4 - 20 watts for the square meter.....with the current rovers yielding around 120 Watts for that same meter.....

louis · 2016-05-10 19:44:40

Yes. That may well be right but we are talking about overall efficiencies here..so if we can generate the PV film on Mars with little labour input, that beats importing the energy generation facility through rocket to LEO to LMO to Mars surface.

SpaceNut wrote:

Loius for, The first link for mars would generate only 4 - 20 watts for the square meter.....with the current rovers yielding around 120 Watts for that same meter.....

SpaceNut · 2016-05-11 17:17:12

Research on these 3d printed cells shown by this next article dated 10/07/2012
3D Printing a Solar Panel every 15 seconds

So where are these cheap solar cells?

http://www.inkpal.com/ink-news/3d-print … -on-paper/

http://www.inside3dp.com/researchers-3d … ge-phones/

cells that are now 30 cm (11.8 in) wide – about the size of an A3 ledger sheet of paper.

I see that the process vapors are vented away from the area....

SpaceNut · 2016-05-11 17:28:54

So what are the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet_solar_cell

inkjet solar cells are made by using an inkjet printer to put down the semiconductor material and electrodes onto a solar cell substrate. Both organic and inorganic solar cells can be made using the inkjet method. Inkjet printed inorganic solar cells are mainly CIGS solar cells. The organic solar cells are polymer solar cells. First, the ink must be prepared. Generally the ink is composed of a metal salt mixture(CIGS) in the inorganic case. In the organic case the ink is a polymer fullerene blend. The entire process is done in atmospheric pressure and can use temperatures of up to 500C. Important factors for the efficiency of inkjet printed organic solar cells are the inkjet latency time,the inkjet printing table temperature, and the effect of the chemical properties of the polymer donor.
Some inkjet solar cells use the material CIGS which has more solar efficiency than the traditional silicon solar panels. Using CIGS makes it very important to have little waste due to how rare some of the materials in it are. This method is also environmentally friendly because it does not require the use of toxic chemicals to prepare the solar cell like other methods do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_in … m_selenide

Grypd · 2016-06-17 09:17:43

My concern for solar power on Mars is the lack of light Mars is equivalent to our dusk due to distance. The efficiency factor we have for the panels on the rovers are very expensive and not something we are going to get on mass produced local panels for the earliest base or colony.

So we will need large solar farms to provide power and that is not an issue there is a lot of room but we do have a dusty atmosphere and I can see maintenance and repair of damaged panels will be a very time consuming function.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-17 18:04:41

Current high efficency solar cells are around th 30% for the yield of 120 w/m^2 so if we reflect and control the heat buid up on the cells then we can achieve more power from that same meter depending on the concentrating levels that we can create....Light weight mylar metalized plastic would be ok for a while if it does not become brittle with the temperatures and UV rays that we would see it being put into.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-18 07:45:53

I think we need to manufacture solar cells locally rather than bring them from Earth. If the solar cells produced locally are less efficient, we just manufacture more of them to make up the difference. What also is important is if we can print batteries locally, since like the Earth, most places on Mars do not enjoy constant sunshine. The great thing about Mars is that is has more space than we need to establish solar farms for all of our power requirements. I wonder if we can have automated probes that can manufacture and lay out solar cells on the surface of Mars, lets say we substitute that for a nuclear reactor. We just lay out enough solar cells manufactured locally to equal the power output of nuclear reactor and then some for overnight storage. No need for the power to be constant for fuel manufacture, we just need the ability to store the fuel produced during the day overnight.

RobertDyck · 2016-06-18 08:18:13

I posted links to a couple videos in the thread: Power generation on Mars
Links are from a show called "How It's Made", which shows a factory actually making stuff. These videos show CCD image sensors, and photovoltaic cells. The process is complicated, and involves quite a bit of machinery and chemicals. I'm skeptical this can be done soon, it will be a later phase of Mars settlement. However, if you can find a way to do it early, more power to you.

The greatest point is 3D printing is to make one-off or very low numbers of items with complex shapes. Photovoltaic arrays require a large number of cells, and they require very pure material with very thin layers. Shapes are not complex, they're flat. So 3D printing is not appropriate for photovoltaics.

Terraformer · 2016-06-18 13:21:11

How much mass are we talking about, for the cells themselves? If we can produce most of the panel - glass coating, backing, wiring etc - on Mars, and just import the cells from Terra, that should bring the cost down...

Grypd · 2016-06-18 18:21:39

Its the technology to make the cells we will not have.

We certainly can make a basic solar cell from martian regolith. But we will not be able to make one capable of powering a martian base

SpaceNut · 2016-06-19 17:42:59

Trying to keep the lunar mining topic from drifting to far as solar power created from insitu mining will be a driving force for mans developement of the moons resources.
Lunar Production of Solar Cells

New Architecture for Space Solar Power Systems: Fabrication of Silicon Solar Cells Using In-Situ Resources

Lunar In –Situ Resource Advantages

High Performance Materials Applications to Moon/Mars Missions and Bases

Lunar Production of Solar Cells

kbd512 · 2016-06-19 18:19:17

RobertDyck wrote:

However, if you can find a way to do it early, more power to you.

Good pun, Rob.

Grypd · 2016-06-20 16:19:42

The issue is we can make a very tough resilient solar cell on Mars and the Moon but and its a big but its efficiency is very poor.

On the Moon this is not an issue but on Mars and its darkness we have an issue.

We will have super efficient solar cells but this is in the longterm not any initial or medium term bases.

We will have to rely on other power sources and there is certainly options there even if we have to use an RTG even though we are running out of materials to build them.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-20 16:48:50

Even if we can make them from the Insitu resources we still will need to import the equipment to mine the minerals, to process them and then the machine to make the cells within plus the power sources to make each device function....The mass from Earth keeps getting bigger and bigger as we try to go solar PV panels.....

RobertDyck · 2016-06-20 21:13:48

If only I had cobs of cash. I have visions of building houses on Earth with solar panel roof, wind mills, geothermal heat pump, and batteries in the basement. Completely energy independent, an sell electricity to the grid. Produce ALON windows the size of commercial storefront windows, so riots or smash-and-grab cannot break through. Mine asteroid "Don Quixote" for rocket propellant and volatiles. Use those volatiles to mine a metal NEO for precious metals. Bring the precious metals back to Earth for sale, leave industrial metals at the asteroid. And to ensure we don't run out of gallium and indium necessary for high efficiency solar panels for Earth, mine Mercury. Unmanned automated mines on asteroids, but manned mining operation on Mercury. Establish a colonizing operation for Mars. Sell photovoltaic cells to Mars, made with metals mined on Mercury. But mine Mars for materials necessary to manufacture locally all ancillary equipment.

Wait. There's a series of shows about that. A dictator um tyrant um ruler of Mars with mines on Mercury? Does that make me Ming the Merciless? But I'm not merciless! And I'm not blad, don't dress in Chinese aristocracy robes.

Grypd · 2016-06-22 03:52:29

We do actually have a rover designed to simply drive around and create fields of these very basic solar panels and it has been built and tested.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-00l.html

Im sorry that this link is over 16 years old but it still applies

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-22 05:53:04

SpaceNut wrote:

Even if we can make them from the Insitu resources we still will need to import the equipment to mine the minerals, to process them and then the machine to make the cells within plus the power sources to make each device function....The mass from Earth keeps getting bigger and bigger as we try to go solar PV panels.....

What materials do we really need to make solar panels? silicon? Is that a rare mineral that we need to dig deep in order to find? or is it a common ingredient in sand?

Terraformer · 2016-06-22 08:48:34

What materials do we really need to make solar panels? silicon? Is that a rare mineral that we need to dig deep in order to find? or is it a common ingredient in sand?

Gallium, arsenic, indium...

Though I think you can make solar panels out of just silicon, they're just very very inefficient ones.

Grypd · 2016-06-22 16:16:20

The materials to make the in situ solar cells are heavily based on silicon Aluminium oxide and Iron also needed is calcium and Titanium. This creates not that great a solar cell but what it lacks in efficiency it gains on ease of manufacture and its robustness. Its so tough it will survive for a very extended time on the Moon and very resistant to all hazards. And there is a lot of access to sunlight so poor efficiency is simply resolved by the amount of light they will receive.

The materials needed are what makes Lunar regolith so no issues in making literally miles and miles of them. The Japanese even have plans to make a ring of them all around the Moon and using microwave transmitters transmit back to power the Earth.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-22 19:36:49

Research shines light on perovskite solar cell manufacturing

Solar Energy 101

Organic solar cells reach manufacturing milestone

How a solar cell works

Hazardous Materials Used In Silicon PV Cell Production

Advanced Process Control of Chemical Concentration for Solar Cell Manufacturing

Solar Energy Isn’t Always as Green as You Think, Do cheaper photovoltaics come with a higher environmental price tag?

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-23 08:21:34

What "environment" does Mars have and how do you "pollute" it? Mars' environment is deadly to humans, and after were done fabricating solar panels there, it will still be deadly to humans! I'd say Mars has some problems with its environment.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-23 16:54:43

Sure if outside of the dome or not in habitat area....but not so good on the inside.....

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#1 2016-05-10 06:47:51

3D printing of solar cells

#2 2016-05-10 08:58:35

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#3 2016-05-10 09:36:36

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#4 2016-05-10 17:36:48

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#5 2016-05-10 19:44:40

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#6 2016-05-11 17:17:12

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#7 2016-05-11 17:28:54

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#8 2016-06-17 09:17:43

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#9 2016-06-17 18:04:41

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#10 2016-06-18 07:45:53

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#11 2016-06-18 08:18:13

Re: 3D printing of solar cells

#12 2016-06-18 13:21:11

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#13 2016-06-18 18:21:39

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#14 2016-06-19 17:42:59

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#15 2016-06-19 18:19:17

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#16 2016-06-20 16:19:42

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#17 2016-06-20 16:48:50

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#18 2016-06-20 21:13:48

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#19 2016-06-22 03:52:29

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#20 2016-06-22 05:53:04

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#21 2016-06-22 08:48:34

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#22 2016-06-22 16:16:20

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#23 2016-06-22 19:36:49

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#24 2016-06-23 08:21:34

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#25 2016-06-23 16:54:43

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