Energy and Exergy Analysis of Photovoltaic Thermal Air Collector Under Climatic Condition of North Eastern India

Abstract The performance of photovoltaic thermal (PVT) air collector has been studied in the climatic condition of North East, India theoretically and as the climatic condition of north east is different from the other zones of India. For this study, one of the city located in north eastern India named Silchar is chosen. Firstly, the validation of the theoretical model has been done with the experimental model of Agarwal and Tiwari (2012) which shows that theoretical model is in fair agreement with the experimental model as the correlation coefficient and root mean square percent deviation has been found as 0.94 and 9.1 %. The study is performed with three different values of mass flow rate (0.007 kg/s, 0.0097 kg/s and 0.0128 kg/s) for a typical day of December and March. It has been found that the maximum solar radiation has been achieved at 12.00 hr of the day for both the month under consideration. The nature of variation of solar cell temperature, back surface temperature, outlet air temperature, thermal and exergy gain throughout the day has been observed for different mass flow rates. It was reported from the study that the PVT air collector has better thermal performance for the mass flow rate of 0.0128 kg/s. For a mass flow rate of 0.0128 kg/s, it has been observed that for a typical day of December, the thermal energy gain and exergy gain has been achieved as152 Wh, and 7.88Wh, respectively, whereas for the month of March it has been observed as 185.15 Wh, and 17.82 Wh, respectively at 12.00 hr. Maximum outlet temperature has been obtained as 45°C, and 53°C, during winter (December) and summer (March), respectively. The exergy gain is found to enhance by almost 100% during summer than that of winter.