The electrical and thermal performance of a typical single pass hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) air collector is modeled, simulated and analyzed for two selected case studies in Iraq. An improved mathematical thermo-electrical model is derived in terms of design, operating and climatic parameters of the hybrid solar collector to evaluate its important characteristics: collector flow and heat removal factors, PV maximum power point and its temperature coefficient, and overall power and efficiency. Unlike previous PV/T thermal models, the present model is obtained with some additions and corrections in radiation and convection heat coefficients for the top loss and for the air duct with more applicable sky temperature correlation. The well-known 5-parameter electrical model of PV module is solved using improved boundary conditions and translation equations for better convergence and accuracy. The voltage temperature coefficient of the PV module is included in the boundary conditions for convergence stability. The module parameters are taken to be dependent on solar radiation and PV cell temperature for improved accuracy. A Matlab computer simulation program is developed to solve the thermo-electrical model. The developed model is verified with previously published experimental results and theoretical simulations; it is proved to be most accurate in respect to percentage errors and correlation coefficients. Different parameters of the PV/T collector such as cell and air temperatures, thermal gain, PV current and voltage, and fill factor have been investigated. The results identified the effects of most important operating conditions such as sky, inlet and cell temperatures, air flow rate and incident solar radiation on the performance of the hybrid collector. The approved model is applied for a winter day (22 January 2011) in Baghdad city and for a summer day (20 May 2011) in Fallujah city. It is found that the electrical, thermal and overall collector efficiencies for the two case studies were 12.3%, 19.4% and 53.6% respectively for the winter day, while that for the summer day were 9%, 22.8% and 47.8%.
In the hybrid coolingsolar systems , a solar collectoris used to convertsolar energy intoheat sourcein order to super heat therefrigerant leave thecompressor,andthisprocess helpsin the transformation ofrefrigerant state from gaseous statetothe liquid statein upper two-thirdsof thecondenserinstead of the lower two-thirdssuchas in thetraditional air-conditioning systems and this willreduce theenergyneeded torun the process ofcooling.In this research two hybrid air-conditioning system with an evacuated tube solar collector were used, therefrigerant was R22 and the capacity was 2 tons each.The tilt angle of the evacuated tube solar collector was changed and the solar collector fluid was replaced into oil instead of water.A comparison wasi
... Show MoreThe thermal and electrical performance of different designs of air based hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and
... Show MoreThe thermal and electrical performance of different designs of air based hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and lower surfaces of PV panels, air temper
... Show MoreIn Iraq most of the small buildings deployed a conventional air conditioning technology which typically uses electrically driven compressor systems which exhibits several clear disadvantages such as high energy consumption, high electricity at peak loads. In this work a thermal performance of air conditioning system combined with a solar collector is investigated theoretically. The hybrid air conditioner consists of a semi hermetic compressor, water cooled shell and tube condenser, thermal expansion valve and coil with tank evaporator. The theoretical analysis included a simulation for the solar assisted air-conditioning system using EES software to analyze the effect of different parameters on the power consumption of c
... Show MoreIn this work, a flat-plate solar air heater (FSAH) and a tubular solar air heater (TSAH) were designed and tested numerically. The work investigates the effect of increasing the contact area between the flowing air and the absorber surface of each heater and predicts the expected results before the fabrication of the experimental rig. Three-dimensional two models were designed and simulated by the ANSYS-FLUENT 16 Program. The solar irradiation and ambient air temperature were measured experimentally on December 1st 2022, at the weather conditions of Baghdad City- Iraq, at three air mass flow rates, 0.012 kg/s, 0.032 kg/s, and 0.052 kg/s. The numerical results showed the advantage in the thermal performance of
... Show MoreFlat-plate collector considers most common types of collectors, for ease of manufacturing and low price compared with other collectors. The main aim of the present work is to increase the efficiency of the collector, which can be achieved by improving the heat transfer and minimize heat loss experimentally. Five types of solar air collectors have been tested, which conventional channel with a smooth absorber plate (model I), dual channel with a smooth absorber plate (model II), dual channel with perforating “V” corrugated absorber plate (model III), dual channel with internal attached wire mesh (model Ⅳ), and dual channel with absorber sheet of transparent honeycomb, (model Ⅴ). The dual channel collector used for
... Show MoreThis study focuses on a comparison of the performance of two similar locally-fabricated solar water heaters. One of the collectors features a new design for accelerated absorber; its risers are made of converging ducts whose exit area is half that of the entrance. The other collector is a conventional absorber, with risers of the same cross sectional area along its length. Each collector is the primary part of an indirect thermosyphon circulation solar hot water system. Both collectors face south with a fixed tilt angle of 33.3
A numerical investigation was performed on triangular solar air collectors by integrating unique layouts of triangular and alternating triangular copper metal foams with graded and non-graded pore densities. A three-dimensional CFD model was established to solve the governing equations of coupled systems for porous and non-porous domains. The two-energy-equations model was implemented to simulate heat transfer in porous media. The mathematical model was validated with numerical and experimental tests, with maximum mean absolute percentage error of 5% and 7%, respectively. To compromise heat transfer improvement with pressure losses, a partial metal foam insertion was adopted, covering 10% to 25% of the air duct volume. The findings indicate
... Show MoreIn this paper, an experimental study of the thermal performance for hybrid solar air conditioning system was carried out, to investigate system suitability for the hot climate in Iraq. The system consists of vapor compression unit combined with evacuated tube solar collector and liquid storage tank. A three-way valve was installed after the compressor to control the direction flow of the refrigerant, either to the storage tank or directly to the condenser. The performance parameters were collected by data logger to display and record in the computer by using LabVIEW software. The results show that the average coefficient of performance of hybrid solar air conditioning system (R=1) was about 2.42 to 2.77 and the average p
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