Abstract:
Electricity become a part of human modern life. It has many uses in our daily life and we cannot think of a word without electrical power. Solar source can replace the current fossil fuel or gas for generating the electric power. The aim of this study is to establish a simulation model to investigate the performance of a photovoltaic thermal system (PV/T) by using computational fluid dynamics method (CFD). The model includes a water conduct tube, absorber plate and system for convection heat transfer. The ANSYS FLUENT software has been used for simulation process. The panel electrical output and its efficiency were numerically investigated. In addition, the effect of the absorbed radiation changes on the inlet fluid temperature and absorbing plate on the system performance were investigated. A dynamic analysis of hybrid photovoltaic thermal system with a circulatory pump was given. A detailed mathematical model of the system is presented. The study was conducted for three cases, in the first case, when there is no coolant in the system and in the second case, at a constant fluid flow of the pump, while the third case with optimized operation of the pump. The obtained numerical results by CFD simulators were compared with the experimental results of the documentation. The both results have good agreement. From the obtained results, it can be seen that the system gives a good improvement for the net electrical efficiency of 3.52 % with a low reduction in thermal efficiency of the system by 1.96 % compared to the system when the consistently high flow is used.
