Investigation of an Inclined Heat Pipe Heat Exchanger as a Passive Cooling Mechanism on a Photovoltaic Panel

An investigation on the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) of a heat pipe heat exchanger (HPHE) was carried out while being installed as a cooling mechanism on photovoltaic panels. The Ecohouse at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences in Muscat, Oman, was used as the case study. The experiment monitored the effect of temperature variations on PV-HPHE-induced power generation. The heat pipes were arranged in a double-sided condenser in a spanwise manner with spacing 50 mm in the center with an inclination angle of 3°. J-type thermocouples (exposed wire, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) insulated) with a tip diameter of 1.5 mm were used. The results indicated mean values of HTC that were measured at 2.346 W/m2 K. The findings showed that the HTC values possessed a minimal standard error from the effect of variations of the ambient temperature. The mean HTC value of 2.346 W/m2 K can be used in the succeeding experiments using the same novel PV-HPHE setup. Additional results showed the recorded variations from the mean value of the HTC effect on the HPHE heat flow generation, which resulted in a 29% increase in power performance efficiency using PV-HPHE.