Experimental investigation of an air source heat pump with multigroup heat pipe radiators

Abstract

As a clean and sustainable electrified heating technology, air source heat pump (ASHP) has been widely used in household in China. However, some problems occurred with the commonly used water loop system, such as low efficiency, complicated structure, more likely to be frozen and burst as well as high electric energy consumption, etc. In this paper, a new air source heat pump with multigroup heat pipe radiators (ASHPMP) was presented. In ASHPMP system, the condenser and heat pipe were coupled together to form a new type of heat radiation terminal, which was named as heat pipe radiators, multiple terminals driven by the compressor provided heat for several rooms. An experimental apparatus of the ASHPMP system was developed and the experiment was carried out in residential buildings also, and R410A was used in the heat pump and R134a was used in heat pipes. The influence of temperature, pressure of heat pump and heat pipe on the heating performance of ASHPMP under frosting/defrosting condition was analysed. The results showed that the new system can operate stably under outdoor temperatures of −12.7 °C to 6.5 °C. As the indoor temperature was set at 20 °C, the heating coefficient of performance (heating COP) could reach up to 3.15 with outdoor temperature −12.7 °C, and it was 6.73 with outdoor temperature 6.5 °C.