Investigating the Effects of Various Parameters on the Performance of a Water-Based Photovoltaic/Thermal System

Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems are a hybrid of solar collectors and photovoltaic panels which convert radiant energy into both electricity and heat. The objective of this work is to simulate a water-based flat plate photovoltaic/thermal collector with glass cover and without it and investigate the influence of four parameters of solar irradiation, packing factor, ambient temperature and mass flow rate on the performance of this system. The accuracy of the model has been validated with the available data in the literature where good agreement between the results has been achieved. The results showed that energy efficiency of the glazed photovoltaic/thermal collector is higher than unglazed one and its exergy efficiency is lower. Results also showed that increasing solar irradiation and packing factor lead to increase in energy and exergy efficiencies while increasing ambient temperature leads to an increase in energy efficiency and decrease in exergy efficiency. Moreover, it was found that there is an optimum mass flow rate to maximize exergy efficiency. The value of the optimum mass flow rate is larger in the case of the unglazed system compared to that of glazed one.