The system consists of a double jet of nanofluid in a 2D channel placed under a heat plate attached to the solar panel. It uses water mixed with copper nanoparticles as a nanofluid.
The system consists of a double jet of nanofluid in a 2D channel placed under a heat plate attached to the solar panel. Both jets enter the channel through two widths separated by a distance and are perpendicular to the active wall of the channel.
“The cooling system is an inclined channel with an isothermal heated top wall exposed to two jets of nanofluid,” the researchers said, adding that the device uses water mixed with copper nanoparticles as the nanofluid.
“The channel has a slope whose horizontal direction is marked by an angle and the limit of which is chosen to be 30 degrees. This value corresponds to the optimal angle corresponding to the maximum solar radiation absorption of the solar panel in Tunisia,” they added.
In the proposed system configuration, the channel is heated by its upper wall and cooled by two jets of nanofluid penetrating through its lower wall.
The researchers tested the system with the aim of numerically analyzing the heat transfer and thermal entropy generation in the nanofluid flowing through the entire channel due to viscous effects. The entropy created characterizes an irreversible process that indicates the decay and usury of the physical system itself, they added.
Through their analysis, they found that changing the tilt angle has a limited effect on heat transfer and irreversibility, and that the entropy created increases by nearly 15% when the nanoparticle concentration reaches 8%. This entropy can lead to significant degradation and usury at the collision points of the two jets.
The entropy problem can be solved by increasing the number of jets and the angle of the jets in heat transfer and by applying hydrodynamics to the entropy created. “This can lead to a simultaneous increase in heat transfer while minimizing the entropy created,” the researchers concluded. “This minimization can be achieved by reducing intensity or even redistributing irrevocables.”
The team did not provide information on the system’s cost and possible commercial application.
The system is described in the study “Qualitative modeling of solar panel cooling with nanofluid jets: Heat transfer and second law analysis”, published Thermal engineering case studies. The research group includes researchers from Tabuk University in Saudi Arabia and Gabes University in Tunisia.
