Performance Analysis of Air Cooled Heat Pump Coupled with Horizontal Air Ground Heat Exchanger in the Mediterranean Climate

Cristina Baglivo, Sara Bonuso and Paolo Maria Congedo
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Cristina Baglivo: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Sara Bonuso: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Paolo Maria Congedo: Department of Engineering for Innovation, University of Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-21

Abstract: A concept of Air-Cooled Heat Pump (ACHP) coupled with a Horizontal Air-Ground Heat Exchanger (HAGHE), also called Horizontal Earth-To-Air Heat Exchanger (EAHX), has been proposed. The Air-Cooled Heat Pump is a system which transfers heat from outside source (air) to inside sink (water) and vice versa in summertime. The innovation is to provide a geothermal treatment of pre-heating/cooling of air before meeting the evaporator in winter or the condenser in summer of the heat pump. Besides, it is known that the variations of the ground temperature, respect to the external air one, are mitigated already in the first layers of the ground throughout the year, due to the high thermal inertia of the ground, letting the heat pump work with more mitigated conditions, improving the performances. The behaviour of HAGHE has been investigated by varying the length and the installation depth of the probes, the air flow rate and the ground thermal properties. All the combinations have been implemented using TRNSYS 17 software (Transient System Simulation Program) to obtain the outlet temperatures from HAGHE, resulting from the 54 configurations. The results are compared in terms of Coefficient of Performance (COP) in wintertime and Energy Efficiency Ratio (EER) in summertime between configurations with and without the coupling with HAGHE. In addition, two seasonal performance SCOP and SEER coefficients have been calculated considering, not only the inlet air temperatures into the Air-Cooled Heat Pump, but also their frequency of occurrence, the off-set external temperature (16 °C), the nominal external temperature and heating and cooling loads.

Keywords: ground; HAGHE; EAHX; SCOP; SEER; COP; EER; Heat Pump; geothermal; TRNSYS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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