EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ABOUT UTILIZATION OF MWCNT AND GRAPHENE NANOPLATELETS WATER-BASED NANOFLUIDS IN FLAT NON-CONCENTRATING PVT SYSTEMS

Abstract

Although the increment the performance of photovoltaic thermal (PVT) systems by using the nanofluids as working fluids have gained the attention of researchers during the last two decades, there is still, a lack in the literature study associated to this application. This study contributes to the investigations and researches of applying the nanofluids to increase the performance of PVT collectors. A flat non-concentrating PVT collector has been designed, constructed and, outdoor tested in Karabuk University, Turkey. The considered working fluids in this study are multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), and graphene nanoplatelets dispersed in water as a base fluid with a concentration of 0.5 wt.%. The experiments were run with a volume flow rate of 0.5 L per minute for the aforementioned nanofluids and distilled water (as a reference fluid). The study results have shown and revealed that the MWCNT-water nanofluid presented a better performance in terms of electrical energetic efficiency compared to graphene nanoplatelets-water nanofluid and distilled water, while graphene nanoplatelets-water nanofluid revealed the highest thermal energetic efficiency. Moreover adding thermal unit to photovoltaic module enhanced the total energetic efficiency by 53.4% for distilled water, 57.2% for MWCNT-water, and 63.1% for graphene-water.