Experimental and Numerical Investigation of PV Module for Better Efficiency using Porous Media

Jordan severely lacks enough sources of energy, which causes a decline in its economic level, this is due to the high cost of production of electricity using imported fossil fuels, However, it is found that during operation, a Photovoltaic cell in a PV system only converts a portion of the sun light it receives into electrical energy while the remaining converts into heat which is normally lost. To maintain desired operation temperature of PV cells with best performance, a back surface cooling channel with porous media as a cooling-system. The cooling channels are packed with glass porous medias with sphere diameter of 10mm. Three different cooling channels thickness of 3cm, 5cm and 7cm with three water volume flow rate of 1L/min, 1.5L/min and 2L/min are used in the experiments. The experiment tests are indoor and performed in Jordan with the halogen lamp bulbs with intensity of 915 W/m 2 is used and acted as a natural sunlight. The duration of the experiment is three hours for each test. Eexperimental tests are conducted to figure out the best cooling performance of the PV module. The results showed that the cooling channel with thickness of 5 cm and with volume low rate of 2 L/min is the best case for cooling. Without cooling the operating cell temperature reached the highest value of about 56oC. Using cooling with water, the reduction was 20.5% while, using cooling with glass porous media it reached up to 42.17%. The power of the module without cooling is reached the lowest value of 10.69 W and with water cooling it reaches 11.42W with percentage increase of (7.48%), while cooling with porous media, the power increases up to 12.07W with a percentage increase f (5.11%) and (12.9%) compared with water cooling and without cooling respectively.