Study of computational fluid dynamics on photovoltaic thermal solar water collector

Yap, Joon Ping (2018) Study of computational fluid dynamics on photovoltaic thermal solar water collector. Project Report. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the performance of photovoltaic thermal collector with different design of absorber tube in steady state condition. ANSYS Fluent software was used to carry out computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. In this study, water was selected as the heat transfer fluid. The geometric model was drawn in CATIA V5R20 and imported into ANSYS software to generate mesh model. In setup of simulation, the viscous model, radiation model and material properties were constructed. Flow of heat transfer fluid was laminar flow. In radiation model, surface to surface (S2S) model was used. The photovoltaic panel used in this research was silicon based photovoltaic cell. Validation was carried out by referring to the previous work. In the comparison between author simulation results and previous simulation results, the root mean square error was 2.52 °C. On the other hand, the root mean square error was 1.29°C in comparison between current simulation results and previous experimental results. The root mean square error between previous research simulation and previous experimental results is 2.08°C. The influences of mass flow rate and solar irradiance intensity on performance PVT was determined. Spiral absorber PVT has the highest total efficiency at most of the mass flow rate among the three design of absorber and followed by vertical serpentine absorber and then horizontal serpentine absorber.

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