Abstract
A Vuilleumier (VM) cycle heat pump is a closed gas cycle driven by heat energy. It has the highest performance among all known heat driven technologies. In this paper, two thermodynamic analyses, including energy and exergy analysis, are carried out to evaluate the application of a VM cycle heat pump for waste heat utilization. For a prototype VM cycle heat pump, equations for theoretical and actual cycles are established. Under the given conditions, the exergy efficiency for the theoretical cycle is 0.23 compared to 0.15 for the actual cycle. This is due to losses taking place in the actual cycle. Reheat losses and flow friction losses account for almost 83% of the total losses. Investigation of the effect of heat source temperature, cycle pressure and speed on the exergy efficiency indicate that the low temperature waste heat is a suitable heat source for a VM cycle heat pump. The selected cycle pressure should be higher than 100 MPa, and 200–300 rpm is the optimum speed.
Highlights
The energy crisis and environmental pollution are two of the world’s major problems [1,2]
To comprehensively understand the VM cycle heat pump, an exergy analysis is carried out along with an energy analysis in this paper to evaluate the application of a VM cycle heat pump in waste heat utilization
Simultaneous calculation and separate calculation are the two main methods to perform the thermodynamic analysis for a VM cycle heat pump [25]
Summary
The energy crisis and environmental pollution are two of the world’s major problems [1,2]. COP, lower noise, lower mechanical friction and usefulness for distributed energy systems with small power output [8,9,10,11,12] This cycle can be applied in the cryogenic field [13,14]. For a cooling cycle based on the VM cycle, the temperature difference between the two cylinder volumes is often smaller than the change of temperature in the cylinder volumes themselves, and the COP for the cooling cycle is seriously reduced Another disadvantage is the specific output is low. The heating capacity output is 7.5 kW, and the COP reaches 1.62 [15] Later he developed a 20 kW gas fired VM cycle heat pump [16]. To comprehensively understand the VM cycle heat pump, an exergy analysis is carried out along with an energy analysis in this paper to evaluate the application of a VM cycle heat pump in waste heat utilization
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