Effect of thermoelectric subcooling on COP and energy consumption of a propane heat pump
Description
The building sector has an important impact on the environment, being responsible for 30 % of the total greenhouse gas emissions. Knowing that the energy consumption devoted to HVAC systems accounts for 50 % of the total energy consumption of buildings, it is paramount to develop environmentally friendly technologies able to provide green space heating to the building sector. To that purpose, this manuscript presents a computational study on propane vapor compression heat pumps which include thermoelectric subcooling to boost their operation. The combination of these technologies has been proven in the past to be very beneficial for refrigeration systems and this study concludes for the first time that propane heat pumps can highly benefit from thermoelectric subcooling. The widely conducted research includes the following parameters: ambient temperatures from −20 to 15 °C, voltage supplies to the thermoelectric modules from 0.5 to 10 VDC, number of thermoelectric subcooling blocks from 1 to 8 and two water inlet temperatures, 40 and 55 °C to study their influence on heating capacity, compressor and thermoelectric power consumptions, subcooling degree, propane mass flow, compressor capacity, COP, energy consumption and SCOP of the combined heat pump. The obtained results are very conclusive, COP enhancements up to 12.29 % are achieved when a thermoelectric subcooler with 16 modules is included in a propane heat pump already provided with an internal heat exchanger for an ambient temperature of −20 °C and a water inlet temperature of 55 °C. Additionally, improvements in Seasonal COP up to 9.98 % are achieved if the above-mentioned technologies integration between a vapor compression heat pump and a thermoelectric subcooler substitutes a conventional propane heat pump with an internal heat exchanger for space heating a single-story two-family house.
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Steps to reproduce
The dataset contains the results obtained by the computational model developed to determine the benefits of including a thermoelectric subcooler into a propane heat pump. The first sheet contains the results when an ambient temperature of -20 ªC occurs and a different number of thermoelectric blocks are studied. The included variables are: COP, TESC_COP_H, Q_H_TESC (W), Q_cond (W), Subcooling degree (ºC), Q_0 (W), Wcomp (W), W_TESC (W), m_R290 (kg/h), Cylinder volume (cm3), T_cond (ºC), Twater_TESC_ out (ºC), Compressor ratio and V_TESC_opt (V). The second sheet includes the COP and the V_TESC_opt (V) for different ambient temperatures and different number of thermoelectric blocks.