An experimental study on using natural vaporization for cooling of a photovoltaic solar cell

This study attempts to investigate a new way for cooling PV cell using natural vapor as coolant. The performance of solar cell was examined on simulated sunlight. The natural vapor encountered backside of PV cell vertically in various distribution and different mass flow rates. Also, the effect of natural vapor temperature in cooling performance was analyzed. Results indicated that the temperature of PV cell drops significantly with increasing natural vapor mass flow rate. In detail, the PV cell temperature decreased about 7 to 16 °C when flow rate reaches 1.6 to 5 gr min− 1. It causes increasing electrical efficiency about 12.12% to 22.9%. The best performance of PV cell can be achieved at high natural vapor flow rate, low natural vapor temperature and the obtained optimum distribution condition.