Title: Investigations of hybrid PV/spiral flow solar collector with CuO/water nanofluid - an experimental study

Authors: R. Gangadevi; S. Senthilraja; B.K. Vinayagam

Addresses: Department of Mechatronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kanchipuram – 603203, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechatronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kanchipuram – 603203, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Mechatronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kanchipuram – 603203, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Cooling of PV module plays an important factor to increase the efficiency and life. Due to the many issues in the air cooling process, liquid-based cooling system is mainly preferred by the many researchers in recent years. In order to improve the PVT efficiency, CuO/water nanofluids were used in this experimental study. From the results, it can be seen that the PV module temperature is one of the key factor that affects the efficiency of the system. In the case of 0.05% and 0.1 vol% of CuO/water nanofluids, the electrical efficiency enhanced by 2.67%, 4.51% respectively whereas for 0.2 volume concentration, it enhanced to 5.3%. The efficiency of the thermal collector with 0.05 vol%, 0.1 vol%, 0.2 vol% of CuO/water nanofluids are enhanced by 29.41%, 39.86% and 50.01% with respect to water. The highest overall efficiency of the PVT system was obtained as 95.87% at 0.2 volume concentration. In this study the measurement uncertainty also carried out for the experimental data shows that the measurements are reliable.

Keywords: nanofluid; hybrid solar collector; spiral flow collector; thermal efficiency; electrical efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJETP.2021.119861

International Journal of Energy Technology and Policy, 2021 Vol.17 No.5, pp.481 - 493

Accepted: 07 Jun 2021
Published online: 22 Dec 2021 *

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