Impacts of Smoke and Smog Particles on the Performance of PV Module /

Abstract

Shading, caused by soiling deposition has drastic impact on performance degradation of polycrystalline module and it categorized into soft shading and hard shading due to smoke and smog particles respectively. This research was conducted in a controlled homemade soiling station to observe the changes in the deposition trend of smoke and smog particles due to the variation in tilt angles of PV module. The significance of indoor experiments was to investigate the effect of specific parameters in a few hours while the rest of all other environmental factors were kept constant. Results showed an increasing trend of deposited smoke and smog particles with lower tilt angle and vice versa. It was found that smog particles had more negative impact on short-circuit current of polycrystalline module 32.4%, 28.3% and 21.4% than smoke particles 8.31%, 6.24% and 3.02% at a 10o, 33.6o and 60o after 4-cycles, respectively. The particle size of smog lied in between 0.46μm to 7.37μm while, smoke particles had range in 152.02 to 402.71 nm. It was studied that the number of cycles and tilt angles had direct proportion with particles agglomeration and had inverse proportion in particles accumulation. The deposition trend, chemical composition, morphology, and optical losses of particles had been characterized by optical microscope (O.M), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy techniques. This study is important in understanding the soiling loss on surface of PV module due to different pollutants and recommending cleaning techniques for its better performance.