Performance evaluation of water and air based PVT solar collector for hydrogen production application

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the performance of the Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) collector based hydrogen production system. For this purpose, a solar assisted water splitting system is fabricated. This system comprises the array of photovoltaic (PV) cells with 0.303 m2 surface area, a spiral flow thermal collector with 12.7 mm outer diameter, 10.26 mm internal diameter, 10 m length copper tube and Hoffman voltameter. The results have been taken for three different mass flow rates (0.008, 0.01 and 0.011 kg/s) and compared with the reference PV module. This study results clearly show that the collector outlet temperature, output voltage and output power increase as the flow rate increases and the PV module temperature decreases with an increase of flow rate. The maximum thermal and electrical efficiency of 33.8% and 8.5% are observed for water based PVT solar collector with 0.011 kg/s flow rate at 12.00. It is also noted that the hydrogen yield rate increases significantly with an increase in flow rate. The highest hydrogen yields of 17.1 ml/min are obtained at a fluid flow rate of 0.011 kg/sec at 12.00.