Performance enhancement of a photovoltaic cell working in hot environment conditions using Al₂O₃ nanofluids: a CFD study

The performance of photovoltaic cells is affected by the cell's temperature resulting from the ambient temperature. The solar cell's efficiency decreases significantly in hot regions due to its high temperature. In this work, the effect of cell temperature on the performance and efficiency of a photovoltaic cell consists of three layers is studied using a three-dimensional CFD model. A serpentine circular pipe has been fixed behind the aluminium plate and used as a heat exchanger to transfer the heat from the photovoltaic cell to the pipe fluid and reduces the photovoltaic cell temperature. Alumina nanoparticles (Al2O3) has been chosen due to the good chemical stability in the base fluid (water), relatively low cost compared to other nanoparticles, and most importantly, a lot of literature concluded that using Al2O3 nanofluid can improve the heat transfer in heat exchangers. Nanoparticles of Al2O3 were added to the water at a rate of 4% to improve the thermal performance and efficiency of the heat exchange. The results showed an improvement of approximately 10% in the photovoltaic electrical efficiency when using the water cooling method and about 12% when using the nanofluid. The importance of the results in this study illustrates the possibility of increasing the performance and efficiency of the photovoltaic cell by cooling it in hot environment conditions with water alone and also with nanofluids by using a small percentage of nanoparticles.