The thermal impact of the fin tilt angle and its orientation on performance of PV cell using PCM

Abstract

The temperature rises of photovoltaic's cells (PV) affects its conversion efficiency. However the use of phase change material (PCM) "RT25" layer with horizontal inner fins linked to PV panel can maintain its temperature. A numerical study of a novel proposed configuration is performed; aiming to understand the effect of fins tilt angle and its orientation on thermal regulation enhancement of PV cells. The computations are based on an iterative, finite-volume numerical procedure that incorporates an enthalpy formulation for simulation of the phase change phenomenon. The comparison between the numerical predictions and numerical and experimental data from literature shows a good agreement. This study is also carried out for various tilt angles in the range of 0° to 45° in an interval of 5° and orientation of internal fins converged or diverged. Results indicate that the fins tilt angle (α=25°) can maintain the PV cell efficiency at 14% with an average temperature of 34,5°C for 3 hours, compared with PV/PCM system with horizontal fins (α=0°) which its efficiency decrease to 12.5% from its maximal value (15%) with an average temperature of 38°C.

Electrical enhancement period of solar photovoltaic using phase change material

“…Ma et al (2018) have performed the sensitivity analysis of PV-PCM system. Benlekkam et al (2018) have studied the impact of tilt of fins on the performance of PV-PCM. Biwole et al (2013Biwole et al ( , 2018 have studied the PCM domain with suitable modelling by emphasizing on the elimination of the cases leading to divergence.…”