Thermo (Oct 2022)

Effective Cooling System for Solar Photovoltaic Cells Using NEPCM Impingement Jets

  • Javad Mohammadpour,
  • Fatemeh Salehi,
  • Ann Lee

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/thermo2040026
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 4
pp. 383 – 393

Abstract

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Attention to photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert solar irradiation into electricity is significantly growing for domestic usage and large-scale projects such as solar farms. However, PV efficiency decreases on hot days. This paper proposes an effective cooling technique consisting of a 2% nano encapsulated phase change material (NEPCM) slurry and impinging jets (IJs) in a PV system. The impact of five influencing parameters on PV efficiency is studied using a multi-phase volume of fluid (VOF) model encompassing the effects of solar irradiation, latent heat, mass flow rate, number of nozzles, and jet-to-surface distance. The maximum efficiency of 15.82% is achieved under irradiation of 600 W/m2. The latent heat shows a slight improvement at the low particle concentration. Increasing the mass flow rate to 0.12 kg/s enhances the PV output power by 17.32%. While the PV performance is shown to be improved over the increment of the number of nozzles, the jet-to-surface spacing of 5.1 mm records a remarkable PV surface temperature reduction to 33.8 °C, which is the ideal operating temperature for the PV panel.

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