Sustainable passive cooling strategy for photovoltaic module using burlap fabric-gravity assisted flow: A comparative Energy, exergy, economic, and enviroeconomic analysis

Abstract

Despite the supremacy of active cooling methods in the thermal management of photovoltaic modules, the passive cooling approach is still prominent due to its simplicity, sustainability, and substantial heat transportation capability. As water siphoning techniques are always promising among multiple passive methods, the present experimental study is focused on energy, exergy, environment, and economic analysis with burlap fabric as a siphoning agent. During haze weather, the day-long testing upholds the burlap single layer arrangement over phase change material-based and evaporative cooling. A maximum 28.6% temperature drop was experienced in burlap based system against the reference module, which narrowed to 15.7% in evaporative cooling and 14.4% in PCM cooling. Even the power enhancement and second law analysis followed the same trend. Later, the best version i.e. burlap based cooling with single and double layers were tested under clear weather, which resulted in a power improvement of 12–15% and 18–21% respectively compared to reference module. Finally, the detailed exergy and economic analysis uphold the sovereignty of the proposed technique.