Utilization of a phase change material with metal foam for the performance improvement of the photovoltaic cells

This study presents a novel configuration for improving the photovoltaic (PV) panel's thermal management system, which includes a phase change material (PCM) with the metal foam layer. During the energy-absorbing mode, the arrangement allows for quicker heat dissipation from the system, resulting in the cooling of the PV panels. The effects of the foam-layer material, PCM thickness, and foam porosity are numerically simulated and analyzed. The results demonstrated that the higher PCM layer thickness leads to a lower PV surface temperature. The extracted curves indicated that lower porosity causes higher maximum PV temperature. Furthermore, it was found that average electrical efficiency for the model with a porosity of 0.9, 0.8, 0.4, and no-foam state are 13.805%, 13.794%, 13.761%, and 13.714%, respectively. All data are almost similar for both copper and aluminum foams, and there are negligible differences between the results. The results for the four chosen months describe that for June, March, and September, the PCM layer absorbs heat and causes a considerable reduction in the PV maximum temperature, but for December, this process is not valid. Accordingly, superior PCM-based thermal management is achieved through the proposed system.