Two-phase flow investigation in channel design of the roll-bond cooling component for solar assisted PVT heat pump application

Abstract

The two-phase flow characteristics of the roll-bond cooling component were investigated to design and optimize the fluid channel pattern for higher thermal and electrical efficiencies. The CFD method was applied to evaluate the thermal, electrical, and hydraulic performance of the PVT (photovoltaic-thermal) module employing different patterns of roll-bond panel. The influence of uneven working temperature of solar cell units on the PVT module’s electrical efficiency was considered. Moreover, the proposed numerical model was validated by the experimental results. The optimized two-phase flow channel pattern was structured by hexagon-grid coupled fluid channel units with the one-way arrangement, and it showed significant improvement in temperature uniformity, thermal and electrical efficiencies, and hydraulic behavior. The feasibility analysis revealed that the optimized fluid channel pattern could reduce the PV module’s working temperature by up to 47.3 °C and improve its electrical efficiency by 46.5% on a typical summer day. In this circumstance, the average system COP was 4.37 and the average temperature difference of the PVT module was 4.6℃, while the average electrical and thermal efficiencies were 16.7% and 47.6%, respectively.