Evaluating performance enhancement of surfactant-added nano-enhanced phase change material (SNPCM) on PV module

• Main Authors: Muhd. Zaimi, Nurul Humaira, Nawabjan, Amirjan, Abdul Rahman, Shaharin Fadzli, Hussin, Siti Maherah, Abdul Rahman, Hasimah
• Format: Book Section
• Published: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH 2022
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.utm.my/id/eprint/100875/; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8690-0_25
• Institution: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

To date, scarce studies have been reported on surfactant added NPCM (SNPCM) usage to enhance PV panel performance. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the impact of SNPCM on the performance of PV panels. SNPCM fabricated composed of graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) with three different percentages (1wt%, 3wt%, and 5wt%), and Sodium Dodecylbenzene Sulfonate (SDBS) as surfactant. All the samples were attached to the back of the 10 W PV panels. Measurement of solar irradiance, ambient temperature, and PV modules temperature was performed, followed by an analysis of each module’s performance using simulation. PV-PCM/5 wt. % GNP with SDBS (PV5) showed the lowest PV temperature (as low as 39.8 °C are reported), yielding the best performance enhancement with the highest output circuit voltage (19.86 V). This leads to an increase of maximum output power by 16.47%. This proves that fabricated SNPCM is reliable to be used to enhance the PV panel performance.