Thermal regulation of building-integrated photovoltaics using phase change materials

By M. J. Huang, P. Eames, Brian Norton. 2004

512 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Elevated operating temperatures reduce the efficiency of photovoltaic devices. The use of a phase change material to moderate building integrated photovoltaic temperature rise has been investigated by experiments and numerical simulations. Experimental data are used to validate the previously developed two-dimensional finite volume heat transfer model conjugated hydrodynamically to solve the Navier–Stokes and energy equations. A parametric study of a design application is also reported. Temperatures, velocity fields and vortex formation within the system were predicted for a variety of configurations using the experimentally validated numerical model. Temperature distributions predicted fordifferent insolation and ambient temperatures at the photovoltaic surface show that the moderation of temperature achieved can lead to significant improvements in the operational efficiency of photovoltaic facades.

Subfields: Mechanical Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/34232418e2bf1146a3a07ec22ac178f0522a94ff

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In Mechanical Engineering

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

Citations in the corpus

Characterization of phase change materials for thermal control of photovoltaics using Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Temperature History Method (2014, methodology): “Temperature distributions on the front surface and inside the PCM were measured and validated through a 2D as well as a 3D finite volume heat transfer model [10,11].”
Optimization of finned solar photovoltaic phase change material (finned pv pcm) system (2018, methodology): “[24] have analysed the photovoltaicphase change material system for two cases, fins and without fins, inside the container considering RT25 PCM.”