Thermal performance analysis of parallel serpentine flow based photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) system under composite climate of Malaysia

•Comparative experimental study on PV and PV/T systems.•Two-sided serpentine-flow thermal absorber to cover more heat transfer surface.•PV/T performance assessment based on both energy and exergy analysis.•Thermal efficiencies of PV/T system were 74.62%.•A 5.76% enhancement in electrical efficiency...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied thermal engineering 2019-05, Vol.153, p.861-871
Main Authors: Hossain, M.S., Pandey, A.K., Selvaraj, Jeyraj, Abd Rahim, Nasrudin, Rivai, A., Tyagi, V.V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cattle
Energy conversion efficiency
Energy efficiency
Exergy
Exergy efficiency
Flow velocity
Heat transfer
Modules
Overheating
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaic thermal (PV/T)
Pipe flow
Serpentine
Solar cells
Solar energy
Studies
Thermodynamic efficiency
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Summary:•Comparative experimental study on PV and PV/T systems.•Two-sided serpentine-flow thermal absorber to cover more heat transfer surface.•PV/T performance assessment based on both energy and exergy analysis.•Thermal efficiencies of PV/T system were 74.62%.•A 5.76% enhancement in electrical efficiency of PV/T as compared to PV. Photovoltaic (PV) technology suffers from the major drawback of poor energy conversion efficiency that is further worsened by overheating of the module. Hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) collectors have brought about a notable change in this technology by enabling the extraction of both electricity and heat from the same module, thereby improving the overall efficiency. However, there are some technical challenges with these devices that obstacles their wide-scale application. The major shortcoming of conventional water based PV/T collector is that their operation is limited only in the daytime. To overcome these challenges, novel parallel serpentine pipe flow based PV/T has been designed, developed and studied. The experiments were performed at different volume flow rates viz. 0.5–4 L per minutes (LPM) to optimize the designed and developed PV/T. Maximum thermal efficiency of PV/T system was found to be as 76.58% at 2 LPM. Electrical efficiency of PV and PV/T-only was found to be 9.89% and 10.46% respectively. The maximum exergy efficiency of PV and PV/T system has been found 7.16% and 12.98% (0.5LPM) respectively.
ISSN:1359-4311
1873-5606
DOI:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2019.01.007