Energy and exergy analysis of a PV module cooled by an active cooling approach

In this research, the effects of using water flow for cooling PV cell are numerically investigated. In this regard, computational fluid dynamics are applied to assess the impacts of solar irradiance, ambient temperature, and mass flow rate of cooling water on the temperature of the cell and its efficiency. Three different ambient temperatures, including 25 °C, 35 °C and 45 °C in addition to three solar irradiances in the range of 600–1000 W m−2 are considered in the modeling procedure to investigate their impacts. Moreover, the velocity of water at the inlet of the cooling channels varied between 0.5 and 0.9 m/s. Results indicated that this cooling approach is more efficient in cases of high ambient temperatures and solar irradiances. Besides, it is found that the increase in the mass flow rate of cooling water has little impact at high flow rates. The highest enhancement in the efficiency of the cell in comparison with the reference condition is observed at the ambient temperature of 45 °C, solar irradiance of 1000 W m−2, and water velocity equal to 0.9 m s−1, which is approximately 17.12%.