Experimentally performance evaluation of photovoltaic thermal system (PVT) integrated with natural zeolite plate

Solar power is one of the most common used renewable energies. Today, PV cells can convert only some of the sun radiation spectrums that fall upon it. Therefore, the remaining radiation spectrums that cannot be converted into electric energy reveals heat load. Therefore, PVT systems are develpoed to remove the composed heat load from the system. PVT systems produces not only electricity but also thermal energy in one panel. However, an unstable caloric energy occurs because of the bathos, sun radiation and environmental temperatures going on during the day exhibit an unintended consequence. PVT systems and phase changing materials have been used to achieve a determined and a stabile thermal energy. Nevertheless, high cost, being unhealthy to the environment and the melting temperature that differs from place to place can be shown as a disadvantage to those materials. For the first time in literature, with this study, plates are been produced from the natural zeolites which have three different granule sizes by identifying the optimum ratio of resin. Thermal conductivity values of the plates are respectively calculated as 0.514, 0.549 ve 0.549W/mK for Zeolite1 (Z1), Zeolite2 (Z2) and Zeolite3 (Z3). The total efficiency of the PVT system integrated with natural zeolite plates was calculated as 38%.