Investigation on the air-source chemisorption heat pump for the severely cold regions

Abstract

In severely cold regions, the air-source vapor compression heat pump can hardly meet the demands of space heating of buildings with a high efficiency. Simultaneously, the mismatch between electricity supply and demand causes enormous energy losses. If the off-peak electricity could be stored to satisfy the buildings’ heating needs throughout the day, it is quite beneficial to the efficient operation of the electricity grid. To achieve this goal, an air-source chemisorption heat pump suitable for the severely cold regions is specially designed in this paper. The proposed heat pump is driven by the off-peak electricity late at night whose working process includes desorption process and sorption process. Both the sorption heat released during the sorption process and the condensation heat released during the desorption process are utilized for the space heating of buildings. Experimental results indicate that this heat pump can work stably even at an evaporation temperature of −33 °C, i.e. it can operate in the severely cold regions. The coefficient of performance is about 1.33. Moreover, compared with the conventional vapor compression counterparts, this air-source chemisorption heat pump is not only conducive to the efficient operation of the electricity grid, but also slightly reduces the cost on the space heating of buildings when the time-of-use electricity price is implemented.