Abstract:
Due to increased efforts to reduce carbon emissions and ensure sustainable growth of the energy supply, the use of solar energy for electric power generation through photovoltaic (PV) cells has experienced outstanding growth in recent years. However, low conversion efficiency has been a significant problem for PV system applications. According to previous studies, the conversion efficiency of the PV panel decreases at high temperatures. Therefore, a variety of cooling techniques have been carried out to make PV cells more efficient by avoiding the issue of temperature rise, using active and passive cooling techniques. However, active cooling system needs extra electrical energy for pumping and spraying water, and the system becomes more complex. To avoid system complexity due to active cooling systems, researchers used passive cooling systems such as PCMs, fins, composite PCMs, enhanced PCMs, and heat pipes. Although a PV-PCM+Fins system has been investigated by many researchers, it still requires more study, particularly with respect to the melting temperature of PCM and the placement of fins and PCM.
In this paper, four organic PCMs (PV-PCM), such as PV-RT28, PV-RT35, PV-RT44, PV-PT58, and fins are investigated numerically without varying the mass of the PCM. Transient numerical simulations have been carried out with Ansys Fluent software using a 2-D simplified geometry. The simulated results of the model have been validated experimentally with PV-PT58/fins configured externally. Results from the numerical observation show that the temperature of the PV panel with RT28, RT35, and RT44 was maintained below the reference panel temperature for only 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours, respectively. However, after 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours with respect to each model, the temperature of the cooled panel was higher than the reference panel due to the fact that the PCM was completely melted. The temperature of the panel, however, was maintained close to the ambient temperature using PT58 and PT58/fins configured both internally and externally for the whole day. The experimental findings show that the cooled PV module had an average efficiency of 12.03% compared to the uncooled panel's 10.84%.
Keywords: Numerical Study, Experimental Study, Photovoltaic Panel, Externally and Internally configured fins, Phase Change Materials, Efficiency Improvement.