PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF COCENTRIC PHOTOVOLTAIC THERMAL RECEIVER SYSTEMS BY USING EFFECTIVE COOLING METHODS

MECHANICAL

In the present study, a novel geothermal based cooling technology is developed for the cooling of PV and CPV system, which are named as earth water heat exchanger (EWHE) and earth air heat exchanger (EAHE). For the development of such technology, the simulations were carried out in TRNSYS by coupling EWHE with unglazed PV panels. The simulation results showed that the performance of the coupled (unglazed PV/T+ EWHE) system hardly depends on the EWHE pipe material and pipe diameter. Thus, instead of using expensive galvanized iron (GI) and steel pipes, cheaper pipe material could be used with smaller diameters, like 12 mm, to achieve optimum performance. Further simulation studies were carried out on glazed PV/T systems with EWHE cooling by developing one dimensional mathematical model using MATLAB vR12a. The analytical models were developed for two types of glazed PV/T systems i.e. tube-and-sheet and broad water channel. To validate these two models with the simulated one. It was observed that, with the use of EWHE cooling, the electrical efficiency of tube-and-sheet PV/T system is increased by 1.5% as compared to without cooling.

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