  A new composite heat transfer fluid consisting of tetralin and fullerene has
been proposed for photovoltaic thermal hybrid solar harvesting. It features a
unique absorption spectrum that is capable of sharply cutting off solar energy
irradiated in the range of wavelength from 300 to 650 nm, making it a perfect
candidate for simultaneous harvesting of both photovoltaic and thermal
components of solar energy. The proposed composite revealed outstanding
stability and facile synthesize root, which are the two main obstacles for
applicability of nanofluids. It was shown experimentally that the additives of
fullerene to tetralin do not alter significantly it's thermophysical properties
apart from viscosity that increases moderately. Besides, tetralin/fullerene
solutions show similar thermohydraulics performance to that of pure tetralin in
laminar flow regime or insignificantly lower in transient and turbulent flow
regimes. A new figure of merit was proposed to analyze the thermohydraulics
performance that consider not only exergy losses due to the kinetic energy
dissipation, but also exergy losses associated with a finite temperature
difference in the heat exchanger. As a result, the proposed figure of merit
indicates the decrease of the heat transfer performance of tetralin/fullerene
solutions that directly proportional to fullerene concentration. The performed
simulation suggests that the total energy efficiency of flat-plate
photovoltaic/thermal solar collector goes up to 60.4 % estimated according
regulation (EU) No. 811/2013. Finally, life cycle analysis revealed further
improvement root in view of environmental impact.
