Modeling and assessment of the thermo-electrical performance of a photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) system using different nanofluids

The proposed study aims to test the thermo-electrical, and exergy efficiency of a hybrid PVT collector cooled by pure water, copper (Cu)/water, and aluminum-oxide (Al 2 O 3 )/water nanofluids, respectively. A model is mathematically constructed using the energy-balance equation across all the layers of the hybrid PVT collector. For the validation of the proposed mathematical model, the outcomes of the proposed numerical model are compared with the experimental data of the literature. The impact of volume fraction (vol%) and mass flow rate ( m ) of the nanofluids on the PVT outcomes has been analyzed and demonstrated. The study displays a better PVT performance with Cu/water nanofluid compared to Al 2 O 3 /water nanofluid and pure water. Merely a 2% volume concentration of Cu nanoparticles results in a 4.98% and 5.23% improvement in the average electrical and thermal efficiencies, respectively. At a mass flow rate of 0.03 kg/s, the thermo-electrical efficiency of the PVT with Cu/water nanofluid improve by 4.45% and 2.9%, respectively, concerning the pure water. Further, the impact of several tubes and their diameter is also investigated on the thermo-electrical efficiencies of the hybrid PVT collector. The tube diameter has not any substantial effect on the performance, whereas the thermo-electrical performance significantly enhanced with the rise in the number of tubes. Graphic abstract