Review of Energy and Exergy Analysis of Photovoltaic-Thermal (PVT) Collector

Photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) collectors were developed by combination of photovoltaic (PV) panel and thermal collector. The combination of technologies in one system has the potential to reduce cost of materials, required space and also improves performance of collectors. The PVT collectors will produce electrical and thermal energy simultaneously. PV technology converts solar radiation into electricity while thermal collector will be converting solar energy to thermal energy. The main components of PVT collectors are PV panel, absorber plate, heat transfer fluid and insulator. Based on previous studies, PVT collectors were developed by using air, water and nanofluid as a heat transfer medium. The function of heat transfer process is to improve PV panel efficiency by removing excessive heat from module and at the same time generating thermal energy. In addition, the parameters that affecting PVT’s performances are including; mass flow rate of the fluid, area of collector, solar radiation and PV cell materials used. The overall performances of PVT collectors are depending on the electrical and thermal energy efficiencies. Therefore, the main objectives of this paper are to analyze energy and exergy efficiencies of PVT collector with different designs and types of working fluid. The performances were studied using concept of energy balance and exergy entropy analysis. Result has shown that energy and exergy efficiency are in the range of 40-75% and 5-25%, respectively.