Computational study of heat transfer enhancement in photo voltaic solar panel using evacuated glass tube system

The excessive consumption of fossil fuels has resulted in severe climate change, causing global warming, glacier melting, and loss of the ozone layer. However, the installation of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels in large scale can be a crucial step in resolving climatic and environmental difficulties. However, under continuous operation, there is drastically increase in temperature of solar cell which can deteriorate its performance and may damage it resulting its shorter life span. One of the solution to reduce the temperature of solar cells is to utilize the excessive heat for heating water for residential and small scale industrial applications. Hence, it is utmost important to determine the maximum temperature produced in solar cell under critical thermal conditions. The present numerical simulations are performed for the PV solar panel to determine the maximum temperature using ANSYS®commercial software. The simulations are performed using steady-state thermal approach. The thermal performance of proposed PV panel enclosed in a cylindrical glass tube is evaluated. It is interesting to find that the maximum temperature is determine for the thermal condition of only radiative heat transfer case. The maximum temperature zone is observed at the centre of the solar panel while it decreases from inward to outward direction.