Numerical and experimental investigation of the energy and exergy performance of solar thermal, photovoltaic and photovoltaic-thermal modules based on roll-bond heat exchangersPoredoš, Primož (Avtor) Tomc, Urban (Avtor) Petelin, Nada (Avtor) Vidrih, Boris (Avtor) Flisar, Uroš (Avtor) Kitanovski, Andrej (Avtor) PV/Tphotovoltaicsolar thermal collectorsabsorbersheat exchangersexergyThis paper presents numerical and experimental energy and exergy performance assessments of solar thermal (ST), photovoltaic (PV) and photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) modules based on roll-bond heat exchangers having three different channel geometries: serial, parallel and bionic. The validation of a coupled numerical simulation encompassing the thermo-hydraulic and electrical properties shows that 78% of all the data lies within a+/-10% uncertainty. The thermo-hydraulic simulation shows that the lowest outlet-water temperature inside the absorber is for the case of the bionic absorber (average 44.1%°C vs. 46.5%°C for the serial). This geometry is also beneficial when considering pressure losses, since compared to the parallel configuration (average 778%Pa) the bionic has significantly lower pressure losses (average 385%Pa). The simulation of the electrical properties of PV/T with all three absorber types showed the highest average solar-to-electrical efficiency (14.5%) in the case of the bionic absorber compared to the PV/T with parallel and serial absorbers (14.4% and 14.3%, respectively). Finally, a set of experiments using the ST, PV and PV/T2 (the index 2 denotes a PV/T collector variant with a foil thickness of 0.3%mm, compared to the thickness of 0.4%mm for PV/T1, positioned between the absorber and the PV cells) modules showed that the PV module, coupled with a bionic absorber plate, achieves the highest average electrical (PV - 8.5% vs. PV/T2 - 9.9%) and exergy (ST - 4.4% vs. PV - 9.2% vs. PV/T2 - 12.7%) efficiencies. Only in terms of the thermal efficiency, the PV/T is at a disadvantage to the ST (PV/T2 - 33.5% vs. ST - 61.4%) due to the air gap between the front glass and the absorber of the latter module.20202021-01-27 13:09:23Članek v reviji124498sl