Energy Conversion and Management, Vol.191, 71-79, 2019
Fluid dynamics analysis for different photovoltaic panel locations in solar chimney
Nowadays, technologies and methods for using solar energy are presented in a wide range of different systems by researchers. One of the solutions to improve the performance of solar systems, is the idea of making hybrid solar system, and extensive works have been done by many researchers. Photovoltaic (PV) panels are among the most popular systems to produce electricity from sunlight, while solar chimney is another method for utilizing the solar energy. In this paper, a new model of hybrid PV panels and solar chimneys has been designed, which uses the airflow created below the collector of solar chimney for cooling of the PV panels. The dissipated thermal energy of the PV panels is used for heating the air under the collector. In this modeling, two main factors as the location and width of the PV panels in the solar chimney were investigated. Modeling was performed for four different modes of combining the hybrid PV panels and solar chimney in three different widths of 70, 50, 30 cm for all four modes. The best result was obtained for the hybrid of PV panels and solar chimney for placing 50 cm wide PV s, instead of a transparent collector. In this case, the average PV panels temperature was 5 degrees C lower than the average PV panels temperature of the non-hybrid mode of solar chimney. This decrease in temperature would increase the efficiency of the PV panels by 1%. Furthermore, in this mode, the maximum flow velocity shows 0.2 m/s reduction in comparison to the transparent collector.