Parametric analysis of energy and exergy efficiencies of a hybrid PV/T system containing metallic nanofluids

For a Si-Photovoltaic (PV) system, the incident solar radiation is not completely used for electricity generation because a fraction of the incident energy is transmitted, and the other is thermalized increasing the temperature of the solar cell. An alternative to minimize this problem is to use direct absorption solar collectors containing plasmonic nanofluids on the top of the PV solar cell to filter the solar radiation. This Photovoltaic/Thermal (PV/T) system has a global energetic efficiency that depends on the optical and physical properties of the nanofluid. Then, a parametric analysis of the energetic and exergetic efficiencies of a PV/T system containing silver and gold nanoparticles was developed, and the parameters set that optimizes the performance of a PV/T system were determined. For example, considering that the global energetic efficiency of a PV system is 21%, for the optimized design of the proposed PV/T system, it increases to a maximum value of 52.45% (16.05% for PV and 36.40% for the thermal system) using aqueous nanofluids containing gold nanoparticles of 10 nm diameter and 9 x 10(-6) volumetric fraction and 0.0060 kg/s mass flow rate. It shows that metallic nanofluids can improve the PV/ T system performance. (C) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.