The present numerical study has been conducted to answer the question of whether changing the type of nanoadditives (NAs) significantly changes the first-law and second-law performances of a nanofluid-based photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) device. The utilized nanofluid is water/ethylene glycol-boehmite alumina in which NAs can have 5 different shapes including platelet, brick, blade, cylindrical and spherical. In addition, how the PV/T device performance changes with the Reynolds number (Re) and NA volume concentration (φ) is also investigated. It was disclosed that the highest overall efficiency of the PV/T device belongs to the system filled with boehmite alumina nanofluid with platelet NAs atRe = 2000 andφ = 2%. Moreover, the results illustrated that the lowest total entropy generation belongs to the PV/T device filled with platelet NAs atRe = 2000 andφ = 1.5%. Furthermore, it was observed that elevation of Re is associated with decrement of PV/T overall efficiency and increment of total entropy generation rate.
