Study on performance of a gas engine-driven heat pump system with R410A for heating and domestic hot water applications

Abstract

Traditional gas engine-driven heat pump (GHP) systems were switched off in the transitional season, and the engine waste heat could no longer be used for producing domestic hot water. Most studies on GHP systems used piston compressors with low efficiency, and the refrigerants used were R134a or R407C. This paper presents an innovative GHP system using open scroll compressors with R410A which can be used throughout the year. The novel GHP system can be switched freely between heating mode-H, which produced heating water combined with domestic hot water, and heating mode-D which only produced domestic hot water. In these two heating modes, the effects of different condenser water outlet temperatures (tw,out1), domestic hot water outlet temperatures (tw,out2), engine speeds (Neng), and total domestic hot water outlet temperatures (tw,out3) on performance of the GHP system for heating and domestic hot water applications were experimentally investigated. The results show that tw,out1 and tw,out3 have greater effect on primary energy ratio (PER), Neng has significantly larger effect on heating capacity and the recovered waste heat, whereas tw,out2 has little effect on the comprehensive performance. The change between heating mode-H and heating mode-D hardly affects the system heating performance. For the experiments, the waste heat recovery rates are between 42.05 % and 61.08 %. The total PER of the GHP system ranges from 1.179 to 1.453 without waste heat recovery, while it ranges from 1.521 to 1.834 when the engine waste heat is recovered. It indicates that the total PER can be significantly improved by recovering the engine waste heat.