Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Thermal Science and Engineering Progress, cilt.39, 2023 (SCI-Expanded)
Photovoltaic thermal collectors (PV-T's) produce both thermal and electrical power simultaneously by using solar radiation. In this study, a new type of air-cooled PV-T's with copper fins was designed and tested with variable airflows to control voltage of the fans (6, 8, 10, 12 V) electrical and thermal loads in solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. The novelty of this research is to design a fin with an increasing number of holes and rising height from the inlet to the outlet of the PV-T. In this way, it is aimed to enhance the heat transfer by increasing the turbulence of the air in the PV-T and to cool the PV-T homogeneously. As a result, average thermal, electrical, exergy and enviroeconomic efficiency of the experiments were found as 32.71 %, 12.77 %, 12.97 % and 0.76 kgCO2/h for PV-T panels. Due to cooling of PV with air circulation, 0.38 % increase in electrical efficiency was achieved. The surface temperatures PV-T panels were obtained with 3.2 % error rate by using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) before the experiments. The amount of power consumed by the fans against the increased electrical power was determined as 16.1 % and 4.4 % for the 12 and 6 V experiments, respectively. As a result, increasing the voltage of the fans increased both thermal and electrical performance and the best results were obtained in 12 V experiments. The outputs obtained about the PV-T collector for sustainable energy systems will contribute to researchers and industry in this field.