Impacts of edge seal material on thermal insulation performance of athermally resistive photovoltaic glazing: CFD research withexperimental validation

Abstract

A novel design of photovoltaic (PV) glazing technology called TRPVG is introduced within thescope of this research, and thermal insulation performance of TRPVG for different edge sealmaterials is evaluated through a well-known and reliable commercial software ANSYS FLUENT.For a typical TRPVG configuration, CFD results are compared with the experimental data, and agood accordance is achieved. Then, different potential edge seal materials are considered forTRPVG technology in terms of their impacts on thermal bridging and hence overall heat transfercoefficient (U-value) of entire glazing. Besides the plastic based edge seals, which are widelyutilized in fenestration products, thermal superinsulation materials like flexible aerogel are alsoconsidered in the research to analyze their potential effects for reducing the U-value range ofTRPVG. A recent experimental research indicates a U-value of 1.10 W/m2K in whichunplasticised polyvinyl chloride (PVC-U) is considered as edge seal. The U-value from the CFDresearch for the said configuration is determined to be 1.19 W/m2K, which verifies the accuracyof the numerical analyses. Further investigations reveal that the U-value of TRPVG can beenhanced to 1.13 W/m2K only if PVC-U edge seal is replaced with aerogel. This can be attributedto the competitively low thermal conductivity of PVC-U material (0.19 W/mK) as an edge seal.The predicted U-values of TRPVG are reported to be 1.44 W/m2K for polymer seal, 1.32 W/m2Kfor glass fiber seal, 1.26 W/m2K for polycarbonate seal, 1.24 W/m2K for polyethylene seal, 1.20W/m2K for acrylic seal and 1.18 W/m2K for epoxy seal. © 2019 Published by peer-reviewed open access scientific journal.