Comparative analysis of TOPSIS and MOORA methods for the selection of heat transfer fluid in PVT based hydrogen production system

¹ Department of Mechatronics Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kanchipuram, India
² Department of Mechatronics Engineering, K.S.Rangasamy College of Technology, Tiruchengode, India
³ Department of Automobile Engineering, Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai, India
⁴ National Engineering Research and Development Centre of Sri Lanka, Ekala, Jaela, Sri Lanka

^* Corresponding Author Email: senthils9@srmist.edu.in

Published online: 19 December 2025

Abstract

Photovoltaic – Thermal (PVT) solar collector based hydrogen production system using different coolants such as water, air, nanofluids etc. to enhance the performance by extracting more heat from PV module. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of a hydrogen generation system based on PVT, an experiment was conducted utilizing various coolants in a laminar flow environment. The experiment was carried out between 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM under varying solar radiation conditions, and the hydrogen yield rate increased by approximately 20.7%, 25.6%, and 29.6% in comparison to the PV-based hydrogen production system. Utilizing an organized multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) strategy is necessary to select the most effective cooling fluid for maximizing performance. This research aims to determine the appropriate heat transfer fluid by using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Multi-Objective Optimization technique on the basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA) methodologies. The findings indicated that around 80% of the rankings achieved in both the TOPSIS and MOORA approaches were identical. Furthermore, the hybrid nanofluid consisting of Al2O3 – CuO particles suspended in water, with a nanoparticle concentration of 0.2%, and subjected to 4 hours of sonication, is considered to be of greater importance compared to other fluids.