A novel heat exchanger design procedure for photovoltaic panel cooling application: An analytical and experimental evaluation

The performance of photovoltaic modules is adversely affected by an increase in photovoltaic cell temperature. Cooling of panels may lead to temperature non-uniformity in the photovoltaic panel, thus limiting the maximum efficiency of the cooled photovoltaic panel. In the current work, the design of a novel heat exchanger that can be used for uniform cooling of photovoltaic modules is presented. For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics model has been set up. Using the model, the effects of various heat exchanger design parameters (like channel numbers, manifold width, the location of inlet/exit ports, and tapered channels) on its performance are sequentially analyzed resulting in fourteen designs. The performance is quantified by three parameters: top surface average temperature, temperature non-uniformity for photovoltaic module cooling quality, and the heat transfer per unit pumping power. The resulting optimized design is found to be a novel V-shaped heat exchanger design for the photovoltaic module cooling. It has a lower average temperature and temperature non-uniformity, smaller hotspots, and lower pumping power. The optimal design is further examined using experimental particle image velocimetry measurements.