Design and experimental investigation of R32 heat pump with microchannel heat exchanger

Globally, the extensive consumption of fossil fuels in hot water production has been contributing increasingly to global warming and energy resource depletion. Considering the extraordinarily high energy consumption levels within the domestic application, the waste energy and low efficiency of boiler or heat pump released by domestic has been the source of considerable CO2 emissions. Domestic hot water provided by the boiler and relative renewable energy have a temperature range of between 60 degree Celsius and 95 degree Celsius, and can be generated more efficiency and small scale facilities through innovative new technologies with advanced thermodynamic cycles and optimised working fluids. However, certain technical and practical issues need to be identified and solved before any such technology is widely put into practice for domestic application. The heat pump technology has been discovered to be a promising thermodynamic process for the system to generate domestic hot water. The domestic heat pump water production process functions in a similar fashion to the air conditioning system, but uses water instead the air source. This project will design and set up a test rig for domestic hot water generation system with microchannel heat exchanger as evaporator and R32 heat pump. The microchannel technology involved into heat pump system is an innovative method to further increase the heat pump efficiency and reduce the physical size for domestic application. Results obtained from the proposed project will improve the competiveness of UK manufacturing within the energy sector by increasing technical knowledge with data within the UK.