Effect of solar energy concentrating and phase change cooling on energy and exergy performance improvement of photovoltaic/thermal systems

Xiangfei Kong, Lanlan Zhang, Han Li, Yongzhen Wang and Man Fan

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 197, issue C, 1251-1263

Abstract: The application of compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) in photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) system increases the thermal and electrical energy gain, and the phase change material (PCM) helps cool down the operating temperature of cells. In this study, an open-air experiment is constructed to compare the overall performance of conventional flat photovoltaic (FPV), concentrating photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T-CPC) and concentrating photovoltaic/thermal phase change (PV/T-CPCM) system. The maximum PV backplane temperature is 69.9 °C in PV/T-CPC, 59.2 °C in PV/T-CPCM and 36.7 °C in FPV system respectively, and the PV temperature distribution non-uniformity in PV/T-CPC is 1.5 times higher than that in PV/T-CPCM system, showing the application of concentrator enhances the useful thermal energy and meanwhile the PCM effectively improves the local overheating and temperature distribution non-uniformity problem. The average thermal energy and efficiency of PV/T-CPCM are over 2462.0 kJ and 9.0% higher than those of PV/T-CPC system respectively. Besides, the electrical power/total exergy of PV/T-CPCM system are over 1.3/4 and 1.6/2 times of FPV and PV/T-CPC system respectively. Results present that the PV/T-CPCM system owns superior thermal, electrical and exergy performance among the three systems, and the application of CPC and PCM has great advantages in improving the overall performance of the PV/T unit.

Keywords: Concentrator; Energy and exergy performance; Phase change material; Photovoltaic/thermal system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:197:y:2022:i:c:p:1251-1263

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.07.074

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