Thermal and energy performance improvement of hybrid PV/T system by using olein palm oil with MXene as a new class of heat transfer fluid

Abstract

In this research work, MXene with a chemical formula of Ti3C2 is synthesized using wet chemistry method and suspended in pure olein palm oil (OPO) to formulate a new class of heat transfer fluid to investigate its thermal and energy performance in a hybrid PV/T solar thermal system numerically using COMSOL Multiphysics. In addition to this research work, Al2O3-water based nanofluid is compared with MXene-OPO nanofluid in the hybrid PV/T solar thermal system. The MXene-OPO nanofluid is prepared with a loading concentration of 0.01, 0.03, 0.05, 0.08, 0.1, and 0.2 wt %. MXene-OPO nanofluid with 0.2 wt % loading concentration exhibit 68.5% higher thermal conductivity than the pure OPO at 25 °C. The highest viscosity reduction is found by 61% when the temperature is raised from 25 °C to 50 °C for nanofluid with 0.2 wt % of MXene. Compared to PVT with Al2O3-water based nanofluid, MXene based nanofluid display about 16% higher thermal efficiency improvement at 0.07 kg/s flow rate. About 9% heat transfer coefficient improvement is found for the PVT with MXene nanofluids compared to PVT with Al2O3-water heat transfer fluid. MXene nanofluid may reduce PV temperature by 40% compared to stand alone PV module.