Experimental Investigation of a New Hybrid Solar Collector (PV/T) System

Solar Energy can be exploited to produce heat and/or electricity. PV/T panels are a good application to produce both photovoltaic and Thermal energies by recovering heat lost with a heat removal fluid (water or air). This induces an improvement of the energetic efficiency of the panel since it is the addition of electrical and thermal outputs. The object of this work was to design a new hybrid solar collector based on the superposition of the thermal and electrical functions instead of their overlay as previously done in most existing systems. Indeed, while thermal energy production requires high fluid operating temperatures, PV electrical energy production needs relatively low operating temperatures. The main goals are to study the effectiveness of our PV/T prototype in terms of thermal energy produced. Moreover, the present system improves the promotion of agro-food micro-enterprises by the integration of miniaturized machines with dryers in remote areas where electric connectivity is not available. In these sites, the farmers can dry the various agricultural products using the prototype we have realized. However, we dealt with an experimental analysis to study the influence of external and internal parameters on the thermal and electrical performance of a photovoltaic thermal hybrid collector PV/T. The system consists of a photovoltaic-thermal (PV/T) air collector of 1.37 m2 . A fan was used to force the convection. Based on the experimental results, it was observed that the thermal and electrical energy was increased when mass flow rate and solar radiation were increased. The thermal and electrical efficiency generated by the system was calculated as 65% and 12.5%, respectively. It was also observed that the outlet air temperature increased.