Experimental and numerical assessment of PV-TvsPV by using waste aluminum as an industrial symbiosis product

•The electrical efficiency of the PV-T system has been improved by using waste aluminium.•3E and numerical analysis have been performed for PV-T system with aluminium waste.•By cooling the PV module with aluminium waste, an increase of 16.78% and 18.41% have been achieved in electrical and exergy efficiencies, respectively.•With the use of aluminium waste, 28.71% lower the amount of CO2 for PV-T has been obtained. Photovoltaic thermal (PV-T) collectors provide an advantage over normal photovoltaic (PV) module use by generating electrical energy and heat energy at the same time. In addition, it is possible to get more energy by increasing the electrical efficiency by cooling the PV module of the PV-T systems. In this study, PV-T system using waste aluminum and PV module were tested numerically and experimentally and their performances were compared with each other. With 4E analysis, the advantage of PV-T system over PV module was revealed. Various configurations of the PV-T (different geometries of waste aluminum) were analyzed in CFD before the experiments were carried out. Agreement between CFD and experimental results were obtained with 6.8% average error. The PV-T system was tested under similar meteorological conditions at an airflow of 50, 75 and 100 m3/h. Consequently, the thermal and electrical efficiencies of the PV-T collector were determined to be 33.41%, 41.17%, 49.62% and 11.57%, 12.99%, 13.17%, respectively. On the other hand, the electrical efficiencies of the PV module under the same condition were calculated as 10.96%, 12.04%, 11.74%. Thanks to the using waste aluminum the PV-T module was cooled to 6.79 °C and it has been obtained more 16.78% in electrical efficiency.