Numerical investigation on the performance characteristics of photovoltaic thermal refrigerator integrating phase change material and water/nanofluid as fluid medium

To better manage the thermal energy of solar obtained during daytime and reduce the negative impacts caused by the global warming, Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) refrigerator integrating phase change material (PCM) and with water/nanofluid (Al3O2) as fluids medium is among the best choices. In the present paper, a 3D model of water/nanofluid-based-PVT/PCM was numerically solved in ANSYS Fluent 18, to investigate the performance characteristics of the system under various parameters of weather, flow and PCM. By employing the methods of solidification/melting, conjugated heat transfer and second order discretization, the results in terms of top, out and bottom temperature, COP and energy stored in PCM were obtained and analyzed. The inlet of both mass flow rate and temperature were found to be the most influential parameters with highest COP and energy stored of greater than 5 and 2.9 kJ, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum temperature attained when PVT/PCM was used is 5.4 K lower than that of PVT, implying that PVT/PCM not only can act as a thermal energy management but also can reduce the negative impact of global warming. The system of nanofluid-based-PVT/PCM also achieved a good performance when operated under lowest values of weather parameters (long-wave intensity and ambient temperature).