Abstract
The energy consumption for heating and cooling in the building sector accounts for more than one-third of total energy used worldwide. In view of that, it is important to develop energy efficient cooling and heating systems in order to conserve energy in buildings as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In both commercial and residential buildings, the heat pump has been adopted as an energy efficient technology for space heating and cooling purposes as compared to conventional air conditioning systems. However, heat pumps undergo standard testing, rating, and certification procedures to ascertain their system performance. Essentially, the calorimeter for testing heat pumps has two test chambers to serve as a heat source and heat sink to control and maintain the test conditions required to simulate the heat pump indoor and outdoor units, simultaneously. In air-to-air heat pump units, the conventional calorimeter controls the air temperature and humidity conditions in each test chamber with separate air handling units consisting of a refrigerator, heater, humidifier, and supply fan, which results in high energy consumption. In this study, using dynamic modeling and simulation, a new calorimeter for controlling air conditions in each test chamber is proposed. The performance analysis based on simulation results showed that the newly proposed calorimeter predicted at least 43% energy savings with the use of a heat recovery unit and small refrigerator capacity as compared to the conventional calorimeter that utilized a large refrigerator capacity for all the weather conditions and load capacities that we investigated.
Highlights
In the building sector, the energy consumption for heating and cooling accounts for more than one-third of the total energy worldwide [1]
The heat pump calorimeter is the test facility used in determining the performance characteristics of the heat pump system such as the capacity and efficiency [5]
At each capacity, the heating electric consumption was about 49% and 64% lower in August for both cases, respectively, due to low outdoor dry bulb temperatures in January. For both months, the heating electricity was higher in case (1) than in case (3) as a result of the heat recovery unit utilized in the case (3) scenario
Summary
The energy consumption for heating and cooling accounts for more than one-third of the total energy worldwide [1]. Heat pumps have been considered in commercial and residential buildings as an efficient system for space heating and cooling applications due to their potential to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions as compared to conventional air conditioning systems [3,4]. The test facility for controlling air temperature and humidity conditions in an environment is often known as the psychrometric calorimeter where each test chamber is equipped with an air handling unit consisting of a cooling unit, heater, humidifier, and supply fan as represented in Figure 1 [8]. This was to evaluate and predict the energy saving potential of the proposed calorimeter
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