Passive/active photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) system implementing infiltrated phase change material (PCM) in PS-CNT foam

Power efficiency of Photovoltaic (PV) cell reduce due to the warm up under solar irradiation. Several passive and active cooling experimental investigations are implemented on a PV cell in this study to find out their impacts on the electrical and thermal performance of a PVT system. All experiments are performed in a solar simulator under a wide range (regular-concentrated) of solar radiation power (800–1700 W m−2). PCM is used as passive coolant system, whereas to overcome the malfunction of PCM, due its low thermal conductivity, PCM is infiltered in a special heat conductive foam (PS-CNT foam). Results revealed that PCM-composite can diminish the PV-cell temperature up to 6.8% and increase electrical effciciency up to 14.%. Separately, active cooling are examined by passing water with the range of 0.3–1 lit.min−1 through a cooling block mounted undre the PVT system. In the active cooling system, due to the efficient electrical power generation as well as harvesting thermal energy, the system performance is much higher than passive PVT systems. The best PVT system examined in this study is the PV-PCM-composite system which its energy efficiencies in the active cooling is 66.8–82.6%.