Numerical Study on the Characteristics of a Specially Designed Rectangular Tube Absorber Photovoltaic Thermal Collector (PVT)

摘要

The electrical efficiency of a photovoltaic (PV) cell decreases as it temperature increases. Since PV cells must be arranged in direct sunlight to produce electricity, heating is inevitable. A heat exchanger can be adapted to a PV cell to extract heat and hence increase the conversion efficiency while using heat absorbed from the cells for secondary applications. The thermal system consists of a rectangular aluminum reservoir that is mounted to the backside of PV panels, through which water flow. In this study, the solution for this was by adding a cooling system to the photovoltaic panel. The purpose of this study was to cool the solar cell in order to increase its electrical efficiency and also to produce heat energy in the form of hot water. The rectangular tube absorber was located at the back side of a standard photovoltaic panel. The simulation results shows that the Rectangular tube absorber collector generates combined PV/T efficiency of 64.8% with electrical efficiency of 11.4% at ambient temperature set between 28.6 to 33.55℃, fluid flow rate at 0.045kg/s and solar radiation between 700 to 800 W/m~2. It is recommended for PV/T system to further improve its efficiency by optimizing the contact surfaces between the solar panel (photovoltaic module) and the absorber collector underneath.