Experimental Evaluation of Thermal Performance of Solar Assisted Vapor Compression Heat Pump

Abstract

The thermal performance of indirect expansion solar assisted heat pump, IX-SAHP, was investigated experimentally under Iraqi climate. An Indirect-Solar Assisted Heat Pump system was designed, built, instrumented and tested. Experimental tests were conducted by varying the controlling parameters to investigate their effects on the thermal performance of the IX-SAHP such as cooling water flow rate, heating water flow rate, ambient temperature and solar radiation intensity. The investigation covered values of cooling water flow rate of (2, 3, 4, 5 l/min) and heating water flow rate of (2, 3, 4, 5 l/min) under meteorological condition of Baghdad from November 2014 to January 2015.

The results indicated that the performance of the IX-SAHP is not dependent on the heating water flow rate. On the contrary of heating water flow rate, cooling water flow rate has significant effect on the thermal performance of the system. The COP of the heat pump system is decreased with increasing cooling water flow rate. The collector heat gain increase with increasing the solar radiation and ambient temperature, this leads to increase in COP from 2.2 to 2.39 as the ambient temperature and solar radiation increase from 9.9℃ and 268 W/m² to 14.9 ℃ and 689 W/m² respectively.