Evaluation of Efficiency Enhancement for a Solar Panel Using Water, Ice and Dry Ice Backside Cooling Systems

The purpose of this research is to study and conduct an experimental test for investigating the increase of efficiency of a solar panel when cooling it with a backside cooling system. There were 3 experiment test-rigs by using 3 different refrigerants: water, ice, and dry ice. By containing a type of refrigerant into its identical box that was designed by wrapping insulation around the box while drilling the holes for the box that did not contain any refrigerant. Then covered the box with a solar panel. To determine which refrigerant could be the best helped increase the efficiency of a solar panel. The research team conducted the tests with 2 time periods: a short time for 1 hour operation when collecting experimental results for every 2 minutes and a long time for 6 hours when collecting experimental results every 10 minutes. It is found from the experimental tests that significantly different capacity in power generated for different types of refrigerants could be obviously noticed even for the short time. For the long-time test, ice was the best refrigerant that continuously enhanced the efficiency for the solar panel with 25.2 watts compared with 24.0 watts for no refrigerant cooling, which was 6.25% increase.