Experimental study and numerical modeling of the effect of utilizing selected twisted tape insert on the performance of thermal photovoltaic system

So far, many experimental researches have been done in the field of placing various inserts in the solar collector, but the effect of using the twisted tape insert inside the collector of a thermal photovoltaic unit (PV/T) isn’t done and for the first time in this research it is accomplished experimentally. Last researches were investigated to determine which type of twisted tapes had the highest efficiency. Meanwhile, ten types of twisted tape inserts were selected to evaluate. Due to the high cost of materials needed to fabricate twisted tapes, the evaluation of the ten twisted tapes was performed numerically. Therefore, in order to validate numerical modeling, an experimental apparatus was prepared to perform smooth tube experiments without / with a simple twisted tape. After validating the numerical model, numerical examination of ten selected twisted tapes (with different shapes) was carried out in the same conditions and the best one (with the highest efficiency) was selected. Finally, the best twisted tape insert was placed in the collector tubes (header-raiser model) of the PV/T system and its effect was evaluated using indoor experimental tests.