Influence of Triangle-Shaped Obstacles on the Energy and Exergy Performance of an Air-Cooled Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) Collector

Byeong-Hwa An, Kwang-Hwan Choi and Hwi-Ung Choi ()
Additional contact information
Byeong-Hwa An: Department of Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Korea
Kwang-Hwan Choi: Department of Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Korea
Hwi-Ung Choi: Industry–University Cooperation Foundation, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Korea

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-19

Abstract: A photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collector is a type of solar collector that can simultaneously produce electrical and thermal energy from solar energy. In this research, the daily and annual performances of an air-cooled PVT collector with triangle-shaped obstacles were investigated and compared with those of a conventional air-cooled PVT collector. Based on the thermal circuit model, a numerical model of the air-cooled PVT collector containing triangle-shaped obstacles has been developed and validated using experimental results. A typical meteorological year’s weather data from Ulsan, Korea was used as the weather data. From the results, it was seen that the daily average thermal, electrical, and overall energy and exergy efficiencies for the PVT collector with triangle-shaped obstacles were 24.73%, 15.59%, 62.83%, and 15.57%, respectively, while those values of conventional PVT collector were 17.08%, 15.30%, 54.47%, and 15.13%, respectively. The results also showed that the annual energy and exergy outputs of the PVT collector with triangle-shaped obstacles were 12.84% and 1.98% greater than those of the conventional air-cooled PVT collector. From these results, it was clearly confirmed that the triangle-shaped obstacles can enhance the energy and exergy outputs of the air-cooled PVT collector.

Keywords: photovoltaic thermal collector; solar thermal system; numerical analysis; energy efficiency; exergy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (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)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13233/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13233/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:20:p:13233-:d:942648

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().