Process Safety and Environmental Protection (09575820)190pp. 1233-1252
In this study, four different cooling techniques with a variety type of coolant for a commercial photovoltaic-thermal collector have been simulated optically and thermally by using the discrete ordinate radiation model (DO) and compared in a hot climate. These methods include a cooling channel with lateral inlet and outlet (case II), a cooling channel with uniquely designed fins (case III), a channel with circular inlet and many elliptical outlets patterns (case IV), and a specific pattern of copper tubes containing water beneath the solar module (case V), in comparison with a standard PV module (case I). The cooling fluids utilized in this research consist of dry air, moist air with relative humidity of 20 %, 40 %, and 60 %, and water in an active cooling method. The results indicate that using fins and copper pipes reduces the temperature, respectively, by 12 °C and 23 °C, leading to 4.10 % and 7.92 % improvement in electrical efficiency, which corresponds to a power improvement of 4.12 % and 7.98 % in cases III and V. In comparison, in cases II and IV, temperature reductions were only 6.5 °C and 9 °C, respectively, leading to a smaller improvement in efficiency of 2.20 % and 4.10 % in both scenarios where no fins are present. Consequently, the shape of the inlet and outlet, along with the distribution of air inside the channel, influences the cooling performance of the solar module significantly. It is observed that in cases II, III, and IV, by increasing the relative humidity of the incoming air to 60 % with an inlet velocity of 1 m/s, the electrical efficiency improves approximately 4.21 %, 5.5 %, and 4.91 %, respectively, compared to Case I. © 2024 The Institution of Chemical Engineers
