Photovoltaic Thermal (PV/T) Collector Performance Evaluation as Electricity Generation and Hot Air Supplier for Partially Covered with PV Modules

Abstract

This study experienced the performance of air biased PV/T collector partially covered with glass at various values of irradiance (400, 600, 800, 1000) W/m 2 and constant ambient temperature. A three various configurations have been demonstrated in this work, case A (glass at inlet portion), case B (glass at mid portion) and case C (glass at outlet portion). The investigation has been performed in term of outlet air temperature and electrical power. A numerical model was developed via using the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) program. 3D steady state, turbulent forced convection model is utilized to solve Navier Stokes and energy equations of air flowing inside the duct. The results compared with the experimental measurements that carried out from indoor conditions using solar simulator, a strong agreement has been achieved between experimental and numerical outcomes. It has been observed that case C ( glass at outlet portion) is more favorable in electrical and thermal gain, which generates 44.3°C hot air and 26.6 W electric power, while the maximum outlet air temperature and electric power reach 39 °C, 25.4 W and 43 °C, 21.05 W for configurations A and B respectively. Furthermore, the analysis of PV/T system concluded that the PV/T system should be operate at moderate air flowrate (0.013 kg/s) which is the specific or optimum flowrate.