Experimental investigation of thermophysical properties of propylene glycol based secondary fluids for ground source heat pumps and indirect refrigeration systems

Abstract

More than 1.7 million ground source heat pumps are currently in operation in the European Union and a large majority of systems is using propylene glycol as secondary fluid. In this study the thermophysical properties of propylene glycol solutions with specific freezing points between −5 and −50 °C are investigated at low temperatures of interest for refrigeration and heat pump applications. The experimentally determined data are compared to a large number of data from the literature. It has been found that the freezing point results for all concentrations were in very good agreement with both Melinder (2010) and ASHRAE (2021) data. Moreover, the literature data and present study for concentrations above 40 wt-% have different density curve slopes compared to ASHRAE data. The viscosity results for concentrations below 40 wt-% were up to 21.5 % higher than ASHRAE data and the viscosity results for solutions with concentrations above 40 wt-% were lower by up to 9.7 %. The thermal conductivity results for concentrations above 40 wt-% were 10 % higher than ASHRAE (2021) data. The experimental specific heat capacity curves and other studies do not have the same linear trend as Melinder (2010) and ASHRAE (2021) data. This difference indicates that currently available ASHRAE data have been indirectly computed from thermal conductivity data or that they have not been fully experimentally validated. Finally, more studies are required to investigate concentrations below 25 wt-% to identify solutions with higher specific heat capacity than water that could be of interest for specific applications.