An experimental study of a hybrid photovoltaic thermal system based on ethanol phase change self-circulation technology: Energy and exergy analysis

Abstract The phase change cooling (PCC) technology combined with porous media is a promising way to enhance the performance of photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) system. Nevertheless, the application of this method is rarely mentioned in PV/T system. This paper aims to build a new phase change self-circulation (PCSC) PV/T system based on PCC technology and porous media. The system is constructed under outdoor conditions using commercial solar panel with the size of 550 mm × 460 mm × 25 mm. The performance of the system is accessed from energetic and exergetic concept under varying operating conditions (such as solar irradiance, mass flow rates, operating temperature). The obtained data shows that the proposed system is feasible with an average cooling efficiency of 34.6%, and the maximum panel temperature difference is 4.2 °C. The average daily electrical energies of the PCSC PV/T system under mass flow rates of 0.004 kg/s, 0.007 kg/s, 0.009 kg/s are 95.36 W/m2, 94.68 W/m2, and 95.79 W/m2, respectively. The results are competitive compared with other works. In addition, the results also prove that the attached glass cover is beneficial to harvest thermal energy but not to electrical energy. Moreover, LCOE results indicate that the proposed system is economical compared with reference PV system.