Experimental natural convection on vertical surfaces for building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) applications

An experimental study on natural convection in an open channel is carried out in order to investigate the effect of the geometrical configuration of heat sources on the heat transfer behaviour. To this aim, a series of vertical heaters are cooled by natural convection of air flowing between two parallel walls. The objective of the work is to investigate the physical mechanisms which influence the thermal behaviour of a double-skin photovoltaic (PV) facade. This results in a better understanding of the related phenomena and infers useful engineering information for controlling the energy transfers from the environment to the PV surfaces and from the PV surfaces to the building. Furthermore increasing the heat transfer rate from the PV surfaces increases the conversion efficiency of the PV modules since they operate better as their temperature is lower. The test section consists in a double vertical wall, 2 m high, and each wall is constituted by 10 different heating modules 0.2 m high. The heater arrangement simulates, at a reduced scale, the presence of a series of vertical PV modules. The heat flux at the wall ranges from 75 to 200 W/m(2). In this study, the heated section is 1.6 m in height, preceded by an adiabatic of 0.4 m in height. Different heating configurations are analyzed, including the uniform heating mode and two different configurations of non uniform, alternate heating. The experimental procedure allows the wall surface temperature, local heat transfer coefficient and local and average Nusselt numbers to be inferred. The experimental evidences show that the proper selection of the separating distance and heating configuration can noticeably decrease the surface temperatures and hence enhance the conversion efficiency of PV modules. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.