Cooling of Solar Photovoltaic Panel by Implementing Fins and Phase Change Material on Back Surface

Author(s):  
Avesahemad SN Husainy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 1439-1452
Author(s):  
Mohamed L. Benlekkam ◽  
Driss Nehari ◽  
Habib Y. Madani

AbstractThe temperature rise of photovoltaic’s cells deteriorates its conversion efficiency. The use of a phase change material (PCM) layer linked to a curved photovoltaic PV panel so-called PV-mirror to control its temperature elevation has been numerically studied. This numerical study was carried out to explore the effect of inner fins length on the thermal and electrical improvement of curved PV panel. So a numerical model of heat transfer with solid-liquid phase change has been developed to solve the Navier–Stokes and energy equations. The predicted results are validated with an available experimental and numerical data. Results shows that the use of fins improve the thermal load distribution presented on the upper front of PV/PCM system and maintained it under 42°C compared with another without fins and enhance the PV cells efficiency by more than 2%.


Energy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 193 ◽  
pp. 116735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preeti Singh ◽  
Sourav Khanna ◽  
Victor Becerra ◽  
Sanjeev Newar ◽  
Vashi Sharma ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 221 ◽  
pp. 878-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourav Khanna ◽  
Sanjeev Newar ◽  
Vashi Sharma ◽  
K.S. Reddy ◽  
Tapas K. Mallick ◽  
...  

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajvikram Elavarasan ◽  
Karthikeyan Velmurugan ◽  
Umashankar Subramaniam ◽  
A Kumar ◽  
Dhafer Almakhles

The solar photovoltaic (PV) system is emerging energetically in meeting the present energy demands. A rise in PV module temperature reduces the electrical efficiency, which fails to meet the expected energy demand. The main objective of this research was to study the nature of OM29, which is an organic phase change material (PCM) used for PV module cooling during the summer season. A heat transfer network was developed to minimize the experimental difficulties and represent the working model as an electrical resistance circuit. Most existing PV module temperature (TPV) reduction technology fails to achieve the effective heat transfer from the PV module to PCM because there is an intermediate layer between the PV module and PCM. In this proposed method, liquid PCM is filled directly on the back surface of the PV module to overcome the conduction barrier and PCM attains the thermal energy directly from the PV module. Further, the rear side of the PCM is enclosed by tin combined with aluminium to avoid any leakages during phase change. Experimental results show that the PV module temperature decreased by a maximum of 1.2 °C using OM29 until 08:30. However, after 09:00, the OM29 PCM was unable to lower the TPV because OM29 is not capable of maintaining the latent heat property for a longer time and total amount of the PCM experimented in this study was not sufficient to store the PV module generated thermal energy for an entire day. The inability of the presented PCM to lower the temperature of the PV panel was attributed to the lower melting point of OM29. PCM back sheet was incapable of dissipating the stored PCM’s thermal energy to the ambient, and this makes the experimented PCM unsuitable for the selected location during summer.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 2558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preeti Singh ◽  
Sourav Khanna ◽  
Sanjeev Newar ◽  
Vashi Sharma ◽  
K. Reddy ◽  
...  

Phase change material (PCM) based passive cooling of photovoltaics (PV) can be highly productive due to high latent heat capacity. However, the low rate of heat transfer limits its usefulness. Thus, the presented work aims at the improvement in PV cooling by using finned PCM (FPCM) heat sinks. In the present study, PCM heat sink and FPCM heat sinks were investigated numerically for PV cooling and the extracted heat is used for space heating. 4 kWp PV, PV-PCM and PV-FPCM systems were studied under the weather conditions of Southeast of England. It was observed that the PCM heat sinks can drop the peak PV temperature by 13 K, whereas FPCM heat sinks can enhance the PV cooling by 19 K. The PCM heat sinks can increase the PV electrical efficiency from 13% to 14%. Moreover, the daily electricity generation can be boosted by 7% using PCM and 8% by using FPCM heat sinks. In addition, 7 kWh of thermal output was achieved using the FPCM heat sink, and the overall efficiency of system increased from 13% to 19%.


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