Effects of rib on cooling performance of photovoltaic modules (PV/PCM-Rib)

Abstract

Increasing the temperature of photovoltaic systems reduces electrical efficiency, output power, as well as results in permanent damages in the long-term run. A new hybrid PV/PCM-Rib system with three different rib pitch ratios of Λ =4, Λ =2 and Λ =1 is investigated to reduce PV temperature and achieve uniform temperature distribution. A comprehensive two-dimensional model of the systems is developed and simulated with a fixed inclination angle of 30°. A parametric study is carried out to investigate the impact of ribs on different melting temperatures (50, 40 and 30 ° C). According to the numerical results and the parametric analysis, using ribs shows better performance in temperature reduction for PCM with a lower melting temperature. By lowering the melting temperature of PCM from 50 to 30 °C, the average temperature reduction of PV/PCM-Rib in the case of Λ =1 increases from 1.39% to 5.16% while the average melted PCM decreases from 20.5% to 7.59% after 240 min. It means that using ribs provides more solid PCM. It is also obtained that the electrical efficiency and output power show more increments at lower melting temperatures.

Keywords

numerical simulation / photovoltaic cooling / PCM / rib

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