Energetic and exergetic analysis of N partially covered photovoltaic thermal-compound parabolic concentrator (PVT-CPC) collectors connected in series

•Partially covered N PVT-CPC collectors and N-CPC collector connected in series can be used for cooking and heating with working fluid: molten salt.•The optimization of number of collector and mass flow rate for working fluid: molten salt have been done for partially covered N PVT-CPC collectors connected in series.•Net annual overall energy and exergy have been analyzed. It is observed that N-CPC collector is superior on basis of overall energy and exergy to other systems.

This research undertook, a comparative study between the energy and exergy performance by considering four systems or cases namely: partially covered [case (i): N photovoltaic thermal - compound parabolic concentrators (PVT-CPC), case (ii): N photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collectors, case (iii): N compound parabolic concentrators (CPC) and case (iv): N flat plate collectors (FPC)] connected in series. A comparison in performance was carried out by considering the thermal performance of two fluids; water and molten salt. It was observed that N-PVT-CPC collectors (25% PV) and conventional CPC collectors are the most suitable of the investigated configurations for steam cooking using molten salt as the fluid. It was found that, the maximum net annual overall thermal energy and exergy were 1367.86 kW h and 150.45 kW h for the N-CPC collector [case (iii)], which was higher than for N PVT-CPC fluid collectors [case (i) (a)] by 1.6 and 1.06 times, respectively.