Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research Vol. 78, July 2019, pp. 437-441 Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a Solar Photovoltaic-thermal (PV/T) Water Collector with a Modified Absorber Design for the Climatic Condition of Assam, India Bishal Podder* and Agnimitra Biswas Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, 788010, India Received 30 June 2018; revised 22 January 2019; accepted 19 May 2019 A hybrid Photovoltaic Thermal (PV/T) collector is an integration of a PV module with a thermal collector for simultaneous generation of electricity and thermal energy. The major challenge facing PV/T collector is its low efficiency, which can be improved by design modification of the absorber plate. In the present work, a novel design of a hybrid PV/T water collector has been proposed by incorporating a modified channel type absorber, which is experimentally investigated under the climatic condition of the North eastern region of India. The effect of various important operating parameters such as mass flow rate and inlet water temperature has been thoroughly investigated for a collector tilt angle equal to the latitude of the region+5 o . Moreover, the overall heat loss coefficient of the designed PV/T collector has been estimated by determining the absorber plate temperature for varying mass flow rates. The results reveal that with the increase in mass flow rates, both the thermal and electrical efficiency increases, but with increasing inlet water temperatures, both thermal and electrical efficiency decreases. Keywords: Hybrid PV/T collector, Thermal Efficiency, PV Efficiency, Overall Efficiency Introduction Solar energy can be effectively harvested for utilization into two broad categories: one for producing electrical power directly by using Photovoltaic (PV) module, and the other way by tapping the thermal energy for various heating and cooling applications 1-2 . Numerous works have been performed to increase the efficiency of the solar air heaters by using longitudinal fins, jet impingement techniques and also by integrating storage systems 3-4 . It has been observed that the conversion efficiency of PV module is generally very poor due to its high heat generation. In order to increase its efficiency, it is necessary to reduce the heat generated from the module and utilize the heat for producing thermal energy 5-8 . The PV/T technology is the integration of both PV module and thermal collector to achieve overall better performance of the sysytem 9-10 . Several works have been carried out to analyze the performance of PV/T-compound parabolic concentrator (N-PVT-CPC) by modifying Hottel-Whillier-Bliss equation under constant mass flow rate and also by considering different types of cell materials 11-12 . The energy and exergy analysis was carried out for N- PVT-CPC system integrated with vapor absorption refrigeration (VAR) system for constant collector temperature 13 . Various experimental studies were performed and analytical models were developed to understand the overall performance in building integrated PV thermal system (BIPVT) by incorporating different types of PV modules, and also by integrating thermoelectric cooler 14-16 . The main objective of the present work is to analyze the performance of a modified PV/T system with channel type absorber cum collector for the environmental condition of a region in the North-Eastern part of India. Modified design of PV/T water collector In the present work, a modified design of water based hybrid PV/T collector having an aperture area of 1m 2 has been proposed. Nine numbers of cavity type channel profile of absorbers of 1 m length were fabricated by using copper sheet. Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of the modified cavity type channel profile, and the specifications of the PV module and the collector are listed in Table 1. All the copper channels were cut and made into desired shape by using sheet bending machine. The modified channels were then welded on a separate copper sheet —————— *Author for Correspondence E-mail: bishalpodder867@gmail.com