Effect of duct geometry on thermal management of PCM – Liquid hybrid PV panel

Abstract

In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a PV panel with different cooling technologies is performed. The basic setup consists of a hybrid PV-PCM system, with absorber plate of 0.25m breadth, 0.5m length and 5mm thickness. The study includes the design and simulation of a three-dimensional photo-voltaic model integrated with a water channel and PCM. A commercial CFD tool ANSYS Fluent is used to analyse the thermal transport. The melting of the PCM is simulated using enthalpy – porosity method. Effect of shape and orientation of duct cross-section on the performance of the system is investigated. The cross section dimensions are chosen so as to maintain negligible difference in the volume on PCM. The Reynolds number in each model is maintained constant (Re = 1500) to have similar flow characteristics, so that only the effect of shape on heat transfer can be analysed. Additionally, a PCM-PV model with circular cross-section duct was modelled and compared to triangular, square, rectangular and ellipse cross-section. From the results obtained, it was found that there was a minimum temperature drop of 20oC between simple PV model and PV-PCM model. Triangular shapes had highest thermal efficiencies, with an average of 46%, Square duct showed better electrical efficiency, with an average of 13.25% with same pressure drop as circular ducts. Orientation of duct showed a huge impact on thermal and electrical efficiencies of rectangular channel.