Evaluation of Single-Pass Photovoltaic-Thermal Air Collector with Rectangle Tunnel Absorber

Problem statement: Photovoltaic solar cell generate electric by receiving sun light or solar irradiance. But solar cell received heat from solar irradiance as well and this will reduced the efficiency of the solar cell. The heat trap at the solar photovoltaic panel become waste energy. Approach: The solution for this was by adding a cooling system to the photovoltaic panel. The purpose of this study was to cool the solar cell in order to increase its electrical efficiency and also to produce heat energy in the form of hot air. Hot air can be used for drying applications. A single pass PVT with rectangle tunnel absorber has been developed. The rectangle tunnel acted as an absorber and was located at the back side of a standard photovoltaic panel. The dimension of the photovoltaic panel was 120x53 cm. The size of the rectangle tunnel was 27 units of tunnel bar with the size of 1.2x2.5x120 cm (widthxtallxlength) and 12 units with 1.2x2.5x105.3 cm (widthxtallxlength). The rectangle tunnel was connected in parallel. The PVT collector has been tested using a solar simulator. Results: Electrical efficiency increased when the solar cell was cool by air flow. Solar photovoltaic thermal collector with rectangle tunnel absorber has better electrical and thermal efficiency compared to solar collector without rectangle tunnel absorber. Photovoltaic, thermal and combined photovoltaic thermal efficiency of 10.02, 54.70 and 64.72% at solar irradiance of 817.4 W m-2, mass flow rate of 0.0287 kg sec-1 at ambiant temperature of 25°C respectively has been obtained. Conclusion: The hybrid photovoltaic and thermal with rectangle tunnel as heat absorber shows higher performance compared to conventional PV/T system.