A Thermal Performance Evaluation of Photovoltaic Cell Using Inverted T-Shaped Fins

Abstract

This work develops a numerical model to investigate solar panel cooling using different air-cooled channel configurations by attaching inverted T-shaped fins on photovoltaic (PV) cell to improve thermal performance. The present analysis done taking silicon as PV cell and copper as fin material. A parametric study was carried out with a computational exercise in ANSYS Fluent R22 by varying dimensionless parameters like Reynolds number (4000-22000), and in fin spacing (FS) of 20 mm, 35 mm, 50 mm ,65 mm and 80 mm with constant baseplate thickness of 2 mm and fin height (e) of 30 mm. Considering various turbulence models, the RNG 𝑘 − 𝜀 model with enhanced wall treatment(EWT) was chosen for simulating the fluid flow equations (mass, momentum, and energy). The result showed that the Nusselt number (Nuf) with fin PV cell increases with rise of Reynolds number (Re), also found the optimum thermal performance index (TPI) of 1.73 at Re= 6000 at FS of 20 mm. These parameters were systematically optimized in steps to enhance the overall heat transfer process.