An experimental investigation on performance analysis of air type photovoltaic thermal collector system integrated with cooling fins design

Photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) system was introduced to meet the thermal and electrical energy. The heat removal by air or water prevents the deterioration of the PV cell efficiency due to the overheating of cells. In this study, an air type single pass PV/T collector system was proposed where a number of thin rectangular fins were introduced for heat dissipation. The collector's performance was analyzed with a fin system that was integrated by a thin flat metallic sheet (TFMS). Then, the temperature parameters were measured and compared to several operating conditions and configurations. Analytical expression was derived from the energy balance equations for each component of the design. Average temperatures from the top/rear PV surfaces, the collector back wall surface and the collector inlet/outlet temperatures were experimentally recorded under different fin numbers (0-4), mass flow rates (0.02 kg/s-0.14 kg/s) and solar radiations (200 W/m2-700 W/m2). These readings were used in calculating the thermal and electrical efficiency of the proposed PV/T system. The maximum thermal efficiency and PV efficiency were obtained about 56.19% and 13.75% respectively for four fins at 0.14 kg/s of mass flow rate and 700 W/m2 of solar radiation. Besides, the root mean square percentages of deviation (e) and coefficient of correlation (r) were used to validate the result while also discussing the uncertainty values. This research will be helpful to design thermal collectors and provide valuable information regarding performance improvement methods in PV/T systems.