THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Long Zhang

,

Rui Chang

,

Chengbin Zhang

,

Cheng Yu

IMPROVING THERMAL PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY PRODUCTION OF PHOTOVOLTAIC THERMAL COLLECTOR BY BIFURCATING TREE-LIKE COOLING CHANNELS

ABSTRACT
Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collectors with cooling channels suffers from poor temperature uniformity and high heat loss at high radiation intensities. However, traditional cooling channels are unable to address these specific heat dissipation requirements. In this research, the PV/T collector within the nature-inspired bifurcating tree-like cooling channels is designed and compared with the traditional parallel cooling channels. A theoretical model for heat exchange in the PV/T collector is developed. The system’s performance with different structural parameters is investigated. The results indicate that the nature-inspired bifurcating tree-like II-type cooling channel exhibits superior overall performance for the PV/T collector. Besides, the average photovoltaic module surface temperature drops by 12.47 K and the system’s electric efficiency rises by 0.84% by growing the inlet speed. Furthermore, the lowest pressure drops is 13.62 Pa in the cooling channel when the number of grades is four and the inlet mass-flow rate is 0.00256 kg/s. With the number of grades increasing, the average temperature of the photovoltaic module reduces. When the channel bifurcation angle is 1.0 α-type and the inlet mass-flow rate is 0.0124 kg/s the system’s electric efficiency is 13.66% and the PV/T collector’s performance is optimal.
KEYWORDS
Photovoltaic/thermal, electric efficiency, numerical model
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2024-11-03
PAPER REVISED: 2024-12-12
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2024-12-20
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2025-02-16
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI241103021Z
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2025, VOLUME 29, ISSUE No. 6, PAGES [4599 - 4612]
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Improving thermal performance and energy production of photovoltaic thermal collector by bifurcating tree-like cooling channels

© 2026 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence