EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON PHOTOVOLTAIC PANEL COOLING USING PHASE CHANGE MATERIALS

Author

M. Sriram, D. Akash, B. Vivek, Dr. U. Sudhakar

Abstract

 The electrical output of a photovoltaic (PV) panel falls as its operating temperature rises, which makes passive thermal management attractive for outdoor installations. This work compares three 20 W PV panels exposed to natural sunlight: a reference panel with no cooling, a panel backed by 800 g of stearic acid acting as a single phase change material (PCM), and a panel backed by 800 g of a ternary fatty-acid PCM prepared from 20 % stearic, 30 % myristic and 50 % palmitic acid. Panel temperature was read with digital thermometers, and voltage and current were measured with a multimeter. The ternary PCM was characterised by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). DSC gave a melting onset of 48.64 °C, a peak at 53.92 °C and a latent heat of 148.03 J/g; TGA showed 99.931 % of the mass retained at 152.99 °C with degradation starting at 248.45 °C; and FTIR showed bands typical of long-chain carboxylic acids. In the recorded observation set the panel temperature was 56 °C without PCM, 52.8 °C with stearic acid and 53 °C with the ternary PCM, and the calculated operating power (P = V × I) was 21.84 W, 22.25 W and 23.83 W respectively. Irradiance, reading time and load were not recorded, and the calculated power exceeds the 20 W nameplate rating, so these results are preliminary and no panel efficiency is claimed. Both PCMs coincided with a temperature about 3 °C lower than the reference, and the melting range of the ternary PCM lies close to the recorded panel temperature. Validated, time-resolved measurements with measured irradiance are needed to confirm the benefit.

Keywords

Solar energy, photovoltaic panel, phase change material, stearic acid, ternary PCM, thermal management, passive cooling.

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