Study on the performance of solar cells cooled with heatsink and nanofluid added with aluminum nanoparticle

Abstract

The cooling of photovoltaic (PV) panels based on nanofluids is one of the emerging cooling methods to improve the efficiency of PV panels. In this study, the effects of aluminum nanoparticles on the cooling performance and conversion efficiency of PV panels were investigated experimentally. The surface temperature, output power, and efficiency of the PV panels were assessed in Mashhad, Iran on a sunny winter day in November 2020 under ambient temperatures between 10 and 17 °C. Experimental results indicated that the nanofluid with aluminum nanoparticle improved the solar panel efficiency and solar PV panel's output power by an average of 13.5 and 13.7%, respectively compared to that of water cooling without aluminum nanoparticles. A temperature reduction between 13.08 and 16.34 °C on the solar PV panels surface was observed for heatsink cooling with nanofluid containing aluminum nanoparticles. Overall, the results suggest that nanofluid added with aluminum nanoparticles is effective in improving the conversion efficiency of PV panels.

Keywords

• Renewable energy
• Solar cell
• Performance of solar cell
• Aluminum nanoparticles
• Nanofluid
• Heat sink