| description abstract | In this paper, a mathematical model of a single-channel photovoltaic thermal (PVT) air collector incorporated with a thermoelectric (TE) module has been presented. The overall electrical energy obtained from the photovoltaic thermal-thermoelectric (PVT-TE) collector is 5.78% higher than the PVT collector. Further, the grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) and hybrid grasshopper optimization algorithm with simulated annealing (GOA-SA) have been proposed and implemented to optimize the parameters of opaque PVT-TE collector. Although there are different parameters that influence the performance of PVT-TE system, yet in this study only four parameters, viz., length of the channel (L), width of the channel (b), mass flowrate of air in the channel (mair), and temperature of air at the inlet of channel (Tair,i) are considered for optimization. The simulation result demonstrates that the hybrid GOA-SA algorithm turned out to be an exceptionally effective method for optimal tuning of the parameters of the PVT-TE system. The result explicitly shows that the average value of overall electrical efficiency and exergy gain are 15.27% and 27.0565 W, respectively, when the parameters are optimized by the suggested GOA-SA algorithm which is way ahead with respect to the outcomes obtained with that of the calculated values or using GOA algorithm alone. | |
