Performance Evaluation of the Air-Type Photovoltaic-Thermal Collector Combined with Transverse Triangle Obstacle

An air-type photovoltaic-thermal collector (PVTC) is a solar collector that generates heated air and electricity from the incident solar energy in a single system. Adding a heat transfer device to this PVTC improves its performance but also increases the power consumption of the fan. Nevertheless, the additional energy consumption has not yet been adequately considered in previous related studies. The current study investigates the performance of a novel air-type PVTC combined with a transverse triangle obstacle (TTO) under various geometric conditions of TTO, considering the energy consumption of the PVTC. The TTO, suggested by the authors, improves the thermal energy recovery capability in PVTC by increasing the air velocity and promoting a mix of heated and relatively cold air in a fluid field, different from the traditional heat transfer devices used in previous PVTCs. The relative height, length, and pitch of the TTO are selected as geometric conditions. The effect of these geometric conditions on performance improvement and the increase in power consumption of the PVTC are discussed in detail. The result showed that the relative height has a dominant effect on the energy generation and consumption of the PVTC, while the other factors have an inconsiderable effect. In addition, this research evaluates the daily performance of the PVTC with and without TTO. The relative height of 0.45 results in the highest daily performance. Compared to PVTC without TTO, the PVTC using a TTO with a relative height of 0.45 provides an increase of 22.93% and 2.79% in the thermal output and electrical output, respectively, with daily average thermal and electrical efficiencies of 39.04% and 17.01%, respectively. The thermal equivalent net energy output, considering both the energy generation and consumption of the PVTC, could also be improved by 7.8%.