Numerical and experimental analysis of the tilt angle’s effects on the characteristics of the melting process of PCM-based as PV cell’s backside heat sink

Abstract

Changes in the tilt angle technically affect the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of panels. Specific to PV/PCM system, where PCM is employed as passive cooling methods for the PV cells, these changes could affect the melting performance of the PCM and subsequently the overall performance of the PV cells. This novel study presents a numerical and experimental analysis to access the effect of tilt angle on the characteristics of the melting process of PCM-based as heat sink inside the PV cells backside rectangular container and its potential used for thermal management of the PV cells. While numerous literature on the numerical modeling of this system focused their attention on the vertical angle, four different tilt angles (0°, 30°, 60°, and 90°) are considered in this study. Excellent agreement was seen between the results obtained from experiments and numerical simulations. The results show that as the tilt-angle of PV/PCM system increases from 0° to 90°, the melting process time of PCM decreases which leads to decrease in overall PV cell temperature from -0.4% to -12%. In conclusion, PCM shows minimal cooling performance at a lower tilt angle due to the role of natural convection heat transfer inside PCM container which acts as a passive cooling mechanism.