An Integrated Solar Heat Pump System for Cooling, Water Heating and Drying

Abstract

An integrated solar system has been developed to provide water heating, drying and air conditioning. Under the meteorological conditions of Singapore, a series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the system performance. The three applications can be served simultaneously or independently. A large fraction of the energy requirements is met by a combination of energy collected from sun, ambient and the energy recovered from a vapor compression heat-pump system. The temperature of 400 liters water could be raised to 60b in 75 minutes and the COP values was found between 4 to 7 with the average of about 5. A simulation program was developed to predict its performance for different operating conditions. Experimental results were compared with predicted values and good agreements were obtained. Based on the validated simulation model, an economic optimization was performed. The minimum payback period is about 1.5 years.