Review
Recent progress on flat plate solar collectors and photovoltaic systems in the presence of nanofluid: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126119Get rights and content

Highlights

  • An updated review is carried out using nanofluids in FPSCs and PVT systems.

  • Hybrid nanofluid is useful to increase the exergy efficiency of solar water heaters.

  • Hybrid PV/T solar system produces higher overall efficiency.

  • Carbon nanotubes result in higher performance enhancement when compared with others.

  • Recommendations are made concerning future research directions.

Abstract

The current review presents empirical and numerical analyses of thermal performance development in flat plate solar collectors (FPSCs). Generally, the productivity of photovoltaic (PV) modules diminishes with the increase of working temperature. Thus, many photovoltaic systems utilize various liquids to decreases the temperature of such modules. The operation of a PVT and thermal system employing nanofluids increases the electrical and the thermal energy. Thermal and electrical energies can be produced by a flat plate photovoltaic system, as shown by many papers. In the current review, two kinds of flat plate collectors are categorized and then discussed comprehensively (PVT and thermal systems). Utilizing nanofluids in such collectors provides a higher overall performance because of suspended nanoparticles’ greater thermal conductivity inside a base fluid. Studies illustrate employing 24% of alumina oxide, 12% of Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), 10% of copper oxide, and other types of nanofluids inside FPSCs. By studying the information resulted from numerical and empirical studies, it was observed that the increment in performances of around 29, 9, and 20–30% were obtained employing 0.2 wt% of alumina oxide, 0.05 wt% of copper oxide, and 1.0 wt% of MWCNT, respectively. Also, the heat transfer rates in plates are investigated with the change of other parameters. Therefore, some results and recommendations for future studies are expressed using nanofluids in the reviewed systems. The current review article provides a complete overview of the up-to-date developments, methods, critical economic factors, the significance of solar water heating, and the challenges faced by the implementations of such solar water heating systems, which could be beneficial for all stakeholders of solar energy.

Introduction

In the past decades, the world did not pay attention to the conservation of energy due to its abundance, while these days, there is much need for that (Qureshi et al., 2016). Climate change and global warming are two fundamental problems causing droughts or floods. As a matter of fact, they occur due to using non-renewable fossil fuels, causing them to produce carbon dioxide. Addressing such problems and reducing greenhouse gas emissions needs global cooperation, which led countries to sign the Kyoto protocol in 1997. Maintaining global warming lower than 2 °C by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide (CO2) was the main target of that protocol. In this direction, a conference related to climate change was implemented in Paris in 2015. The conference’s main target was expressing the need for the world to obtain global temperature growth lower than 1.5 °C due to fossil fuel extinction and environmental challenges. Hence, many countries worldwide commenced to employ alternative renewable energy sources like wind, geothermal, and solar types (Vural, 2020).

From 1990, the world experienced a growing trend in global greenhouse emissions and carbon dioxide (an increase of 65 percent) (Olivier et al., 2017). Fig. 1(a) shows that a large amount of carbon dioxide emission is associated with the energy sector. Despite the most significant growth in global power production, renewables account for a small range of 27 percent, whereas fossil fuels currently account for above 70 percent of coal (around 38 percent) (World energy outlook, 2019). The overview of all GHG removals and emissions is included in Fig. 1(a) to show their share, generally, total anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nonetheless, data on emission information concentrate on those resulted from EDGAR database, excluding LULUCF emissions.

Nonetheless, renewable energy consumption observed an increasing trend during the 10 years ago (as can be seen in Fig. 1(b)) (IRENA, 2018). It is projected that it will experience about 40 percent of global power in 2040 (19 percent of transportation energy demand and 25 percent of heat demand). Hence, using renewable energy sources is very significant for the world.

Section snippets

Methodology

Low thermal performance of solar thermal collectors is a critical challenge for the research community (Said et al., 2021(a)). Low performance is reported due to limitations in their design and production, the type of materials used in the different parts of construction, and the absorbers (Bellos et al., 2018; Said et al., 2021(b)). Various investigations have been performed on solar thermal collectors’ thermal behavior and focused on the issues focused on their performance by developing

Solar collectors

Since solar energy is available abundantly almost everywhere and using it does not have any carbon production for industries so, it is the best source of renewable energy among other sources when it converts to other types of energy such as thermal or electrical energy (Prasad et al., 2017; Rosen, 2002). The source of solar cooling and heating systems is solar energy. This kind of energy is collected through two modern methods. In the first one, the sun’s heat is directly collected through the

Flat plate solar collector

FPSCs are widely applied in low temperature applications, involving industrial procedure heat, and building heating. In the early 1960s, the generation of FPSCs began. They are grouped into two main classifications: the forced circulation and thermosiphon type (Sakhaei and Valipour, 2019).

Nanofluid

The best-known technique of boosting the performance of solar collectors would be applying nanofluids under specific conditions. Consequently, across the globe, scientists are looking to follow this survey. This is true that fluids that used to be applied, such as water and oil in this industry, can be found with ease; however, they are less productive. What makes a difference in nanofluid is the way it is blended with an ordinary fluid and nanoparticles, which can be found in different sizes

Using nanofluid in FPSCs thermal systems

Several techniques are utilized to enhance the thermal performance of FPSCs. One method to enhance k is by adding Nano-sized into the pure fluid. The conductivity of water is proved to be lower, and therefore it is essential to find a substitute to increase collector performance. Nanoparticles of various materials have seen a wide range of applications with nanotechnology development. Many new discoveries came in, and this new discovery of “Nanofluids revolutionized fluids.” When nanoparticles

Summary

This paper presents a review of the utilization of nanomaterials for increasing the efficiency of FPSCs. Optimization investigation gives us the chance to obtain the optimum amounts of the design and working parameters while controlling to augment the collector’s efficiency. Improvement of FPSC for developed performance can be conducted by at least one of the presented ways: developing absorber design, selecting substances having the great absorbing capacity and thermal conductivity for

Challenges, outlook and future directions

After a wide-ranging review of remarkable research by researchers and engineers in the solar industry, the future scope is carried out for further advancement in academia and industry. The following suggestions can be considered, such as:

  • 1.

    There is a possibility for performance improvement up to a specific volume concentration of nanoparticles shortly, even at higher concentrations.

  • 2.

    Hybrid nanomaterials can be implemented as promising operate fluid in FPSC and PVT to study performance enhancement.

  • 3.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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