Numerical investigation of pyramidal PCM enclosure design on photovoltaic thermal performance

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2026

Abstract

Since energy demand increases as time passes, the utilization of photovoltaics (PV) becomes necessary and prevalent. However, one major issue of PVs is their poor energy conversion efficiency. As the temperature of the PV cell increases, its efficiency drops. The integration of phase change materials (PCMs) with PV systems helps in absorbing heat and improving system performance. In this study, a three-dimensional numerical model was developed to investigate the effect of the pyramidal enclosure geometry design for the PCM on the thermal and electrical performance of the PV. The study considers three different dimensions of the enclosure geometry, the effect of wind speed and the variation of incident solar irradiance according to real data in Cairo. RT-42 paraffin wax was used in the enclosures and tested under three different conditions: insulated PV back surface; cooled back surface with wind speed of 3 m/s; and transient cooling conditions. Results showed that the configuration with 24 enclosures reduced the temperature 17.92 % with the aid of PCM. For energy storage, the system with 6 enclosures achieved maximum thermal energy storage of 206.3 kJ/kg. The 15-enclosure system was optimized in which the total amount of PCM was reduced by 23.55 % while maintaining the same performance of the PV. The results of the current study indicate that the proposed design is promising for future work.

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