This work shows that adding a highly conductive metal-foam layer to the backside of the PCM container improves the use of phase change material PCM-based thermal management for photovoltaic (PV) panels. This novel method improves overall thermal management by using the metal foam’s remarkable thermal conductivity to enable more effective heat transfer from the PV panel to the PCM. As the title of the project suggests, the current CFD simulation of Photovoltaic system with metal-foam layer using PCM is a numerical paper validation. It is based on the paper entitled “ Efficient thermal management of the photovoltaic/phase change material system with innovative exterior metal-foam layer” published in Solar Energy journal in 2021.

Simulation Process

The novel design of photovoltaic system is erected from several layers, portrayed in the figure. The transparent glass layer is on top and transmit heat received from sun to the layers. Next layers are EVA, silicon, aluminum, PCM, etc. The PCM layer requires a time-dependent (transient) simulation to track melting over time. Nevertheless, Solidification and Melting module is activated. In the current case, the tilt angle (alpha) is set to 30°. A smooth structured grid is also carried out with 22134 elements. All thermos-physical properties of the PV-PCM-foam system are taken from Table 1 given in the paper.

Post-processing

Over a period of 120 minutes, the photovoltaic (PV) system’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation with a metal-foam layer that incorporates phase change material (PCM) was verified. The findings showed that the PCM successfully controlled the average temperature of the PV layer, keeping temperatures within ideal operating limits. The correctness of the simulation was validated by comparative analysis with numerical data, as evidenced by the strong agreement observed in the temperature variation charts over time.