article · Renewable Energy
This study provides a numerical analysis of a hybrid photovoltaic-thermal solar collector that incorporates natural flax fibres within a water-based cooling channel. Active cooling helps regulate solar cell temperatures while producing usable thermal energy. Using fluid flow simulations and porous media modelling, the research evaluated the effects of porous layer thickness, solar flux, and coolant flow rates on overall performance. The results demonstrate that embedding flax fibres significantly enhances heat transfer compared to conventional cooling methods. At optimal operating conditions, comprising a 50-millimetre fibre layer and a flow rate of 0.907 metres per second, the Nusselt number increased by over 173 per cent compared to pure water. Furthermore, the system achieved a thermal efficiency of 69.58 per cent, substantially outperforming collectors cooled solely by pure water or air.
Solar panels lose electrical efficiency as they overheat during operation. Integrating natural materials like flax fibres into liquid cooling channels presents an effective method to remove excess heat while gathering useful thermal energy. Demonstrating that natural porous fibres enhance heat dissipation provides valuable insight for designing higher-efficiency hybrid solar collectors that generate both electricity and hot water more effectively.
This work is relevant to solar technology designers and manufacturers seeking passive heat transfer enhancement within hybrid photovoltaic-thermal systems. By showing that natural flax fibres improve thermal efficiency over pure water and air, it points toward more efficient dual-generation solar products. However, because the findings are derived entirely from numerical simulations in software, the technology sits at an early stage of development and requires experimental physical validation prior to commercial adoption.
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Photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collector-based active cooling technology makes it possible to increase the efficiency of PV solar cells and meanwhile generate heat through the direct conversion of solar irradiation into electricity. Hence, this study presents a detailed numerical analysis of the thermal performance of PVT solar collectors integrated with flax fibers as natural porous materials. To achieve this goal, a cooling channel is proposed, which contains porous flax fiber materials doping in pure water as a cooling fluid for the photovoltaic panels. A particular focus of this research is emphasized on the effects of the thickness of the porous material layer (5−50 mm), the solar flux (50−1000 W/m2), and the flow rate of coolant (0.40−1.0 m/s), to determine the best thickness of the porous material and the cooling fluid flowrate that achieves the highest performance of photovoltaic panels. The simulations are performed using ANSYS software, Navier Stokes equations, and Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer porous model. Moreover, the thermal performance of the proposed PVT system cooled with water/porous flax fibers mixture is analyzed and compared with the PVT collector using pure water and air as a coolant. The results presented that the optimal design for maximization of the cooling of photovoltaic panels is attained by incorporating porous flax fibers materials with a thickness of 50 mm and 0.907 m/s cooling water flowrate. It is indicated that the Nusselt number is increased from 18.65 to 51.0, with an improvement of 173.46% as compared to the use of only pure water at the optimal conditions. Moreover, the thermal efficiencies of the PVT system are obtained as 69.58%, 50.02%, and 34.60% using water with a flax fibers layer, pure water, and air, respectively.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2023.119245
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