Paper Conference

Proceedings of eSim 2016: 9th Conference of IBPSA-Canada

     

A CFD study of natural convection inside a BIPV/T system

Derek Roeleveld, Rakesh Kumar, David Naylor, Alan Fung

Abstract: Natural convection inside a building integrated photovoltaic/thermal (BIPV/T) system is investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Normally, BIPV/T systems utilize forced convection in the air channel behind the photovoltaic panel, but this requires fans to move the air through the system. These fans use energy that is being produced by the BIPV/T system. In this study, natural convection is used to investigate if it is feasible to remove the fans and therefore reduce the energy requirement. The thermal behavior inside the BIPV/T system is of interest in this study. COMSOL Multiphysics is used to develop a numerical model to study the heat transfer inside a BIPV/T system using natural convection. This numerical model is validated with some experimental data. A comparison is presented of the temperature profiles and heat fluxes between the natural and forced convection cases.
Pages: 9 - 16
Paper:
esim2016_32-88