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Three passive cooling configurations of a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system have been proposed to dissipate the heat via pure phase change material (PCM), Nano-PCM, and metal Foam-PCM as heat absorbers. A computational fluid dynamic model has been developed to compare the cooling capacity, thermal performance, and electrical efficiency of these configurations at three inclination angles. Evaluation of metal Foam-PCM performance, comparison between Foam- and Nano-PCM at different inclination angles, and exploring the effects on the output efficiencies are the most significant innovations of this study, which is not presented extensively before. In this regard, an experimental setup has been provided to validate the numerical simulations. The results revealed that the Foam-PCM sink could accelerate the melting process so that it mitigates the complete melting time and average PV temperature by 13.6% and 10.7%, respectively, at 150° inclination angle compared to the pure PCM. While the Nano-PCM sink does not make significant improvements. The results also indicate that the amount of absorbed heat and produced electricity till the complete melting time in Foam-PCM are increased by 7.5% and 4.8%, respectively. The superiority of the metal Foam-PCM sink could be improved by increasing the mass of metal through reducing the foam porosity. |
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