Computational Modeling of Air and Dust Flow around Solar PV Panels

One of the biggest challenges of the world is to find sufficient energy for the future. Solar energy is the largest and most abundant renewable energy. However, the performance of a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel is significantly reduced because of the dust deposition on its surface. This work is concerned with the numerical investigation of air flow and dust deposition behavior around a ground mounted solar PV panel using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Moreover, installing vortex generators (VGs) as a passive cleaning method on the PV panels is introduced and analyzed. Simulations are performed based on Cairo, Egypt environmental parameters. The influence of the wind speed, the dust particle size, and the dust material on the dust deposition rate on the PV panel in Cairo is investigated. For wind speeds higher than 2 m/s, it is found that increasing both the dust particle diameter and the dust density increases the dust deposition rate. It is found that installing VGs on the PV panels in Cairo will result in a dust deposition reduction of about 35%.