A parametric study on the performance characteristics of an evacuated flat-plate photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collector

Experimental investigation and annual performance mathematical-prediction on a novel LT-PV/T system using spiral-descent concentric copper tube heat exchanger as the condenser for large-scale application

“…)is built to evaluate the thermal performance considering the dynamic initial water tank temperature, solar radiation and average ambient temperature, as [26,27]: (6) where is the typical thermal efficiency in condition that the initial water tank temperature equals the ambient temperature, while is thermal heat loss coefficient (KJ/m 2 K). Correspondingly, the primary energy-saving efficiency is expressed by: (7) where and is the typical primary energy-saving efficiency and primary energy loss coefficient…”

Spectral-splitting hybrid PV-thermal (PV-T) solar collectors employing semi-transparent solar cells as optical filters

“…This study employs the PV sub-model (i.e., Eqs. ( 7) and ( 8)) having been widely utilised and validated by other researchers (Herrando et al [7], Wang et al [8], Hu et al [9] and Huang et al [29] etc.). Figure 6.…”

“…A thermal absorber is usually designed to be tightly attached to the PV cells for better heat transfer and a higher thermal efficiency [8]. The thermal performance of PVT collectors can be further improved by additional glazing layers, vacuum gaps [9], and phase change materials (PCM) [10]. Excellent review articles by Chow [11], Zhang et al [12] and Li et al [13] summarise the performance of PVT collectors with different types of thermal absorber structures, working fluids and solar concentrators.…”

Numerical performance investigation of High Vacuum Flat Plate Hybrid Photovoltaic-Thermal devices.

“…Mellor et al [10] and Hu et al [11] proposed Silicon-based PV-T encapsulated in vacuum, demonstrating the thermal efficiency enhancement due to the abatement of convective losses, but the lamination of Silicon Cells on copper doesn't extend the spectral exploitation of the device: copper becomes highly reflective long before the wavelength corresponding to the bandgap of Silicon (1.1 eV = 1029 nm). The effectiveness of high vacuum encapsulation in flat plate architectures has been validated for both Solar-Thermal (ST) [12,13,14] and PV-T devices [10,11,15]. For the PV-Ts, the abatement of convective losses can double the thermal efficiency against the non-evacuated architecture [10].…”