Experimental Study on the Performance Enhancement of the Photovoltaic Cells by Using Various Nano-Enhanced PCMs

Abstract

The present paper presented an experimental work to enhance the photovoltaic cells performance. A heated aluminum plate is used to simulate the PV solar cell. The effect of different phase change material (PCM) type, heat sink configurations, PCM mixed with Al2O3 nanoparticles at different volumetric concentrations from 0.11 to 0.77% are experimentally investigated. The PCMs used are RT28HC, RT35HC and RT44HC which have melting point near the PV solar cell reference temperature. Three different heat sinks of hollow cylindrical fins, 11, 18 and 22 fins, are used to act as thermal conductivity enhancer (TCE) to improve the heat transfer rate to the PCM and achieve uniform heat distribution within the PCM. The experiments are carried out for free surface-simulated PV solar cell, simulated PV solar cell with heat sink only, simulated PV solar cell with heat sink and pure PCM and finally simulated PV solar cell with heat sink and PCM with nanoparticles. The results show good enhancement in the reduction in front surface temperature and the highest enhancement is 57.7% that occurs at heat flux of 820 W/m2 and 22 hollow cylindrical copper fins immersed in the mixture of RT44HC-Al2O3 nanoparticles with concentration of 0.77% by volume at T∞ = 21 ± 1 °C.