TY - JOUR
T1 - A Review of Recent Advancements in Heat Pump Systems and Developments in Microchannel Heat Exchangers
AU - Sureddi, Roopesh Chowdary
AU - Li, Liang
AU - Wu, Hongwei
AU - Giannetti, Niccolo
AU - Saito, Kiyoshi
AU - Rees, David
N1 - © 2025 The Author(s). Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
PY - 2025/4/18
Y1 - 2025/4/18
N2 - Heating and cooling are the main concerns across a wide range of sectors, including residential buildings, industrial facilities, transportation and commercial enterprises. This being the case, a continuous rise in the cost of energy demands more effective ways to conserve energy. Heat pump (HP) systems provide the one of the best possible solutions to this problem as they offer an economical and energy-efficient system. In this review, HP systems are overviewed as energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions, focusing on their characteristic properties but also on enhancements, novel techniques and the use of heat exchangers (HXs), and microchannel heat exchangers (MCHEs) in these systems, as well as their development in recent years and their limitations. The main factors contributing to variations in the performance of HP systems are temperature and humidity in the ambient atmosphere. The present study is expected to support numerical and experimental performance analysis, and design miniaturisation via MCHEs. Unique designs or manufacturing techniques in MCHEs; various configurations in HP systems, depending on their load and environmental conditions; various nanofluids; and a comparison of nanofluids with different base metals are presented and discussed. Comparisons between various MCHEs and their respective limitations provide evidence-based guidelines for technology selection and designs for optimised operation at given environmental and load conditions.
AB - Heating and cooling are the main concerns across a wide range of sectors, including residential buildings, industrial facilities, transportation and commercial enterprises. This being the case, a continuous rise in the cost of energy demands more effective ways to conserve energy. Heat pump (HP) systems provide the one of the best possible solutions to this problem as they offer an economical and energy-efficient system. In this review, HP systems are overviewed as energy-efficient and cost-effective solutions, focusing on their characteristic properties but also on enhancements, novel techniques and the use of heat exchangers (HXs), and microchannel heat exchangers (MCHEs) in these systems, as well as their development in recent years and their limitations. The main factors contributing to variations in the performance of HP systems are temperature and humidity in the ambient atmosphere. The present study is expected to support numerical and experimental performance analysis, and design miniaturisation via MCHEs. Unique designs or manufacturing techniques in MCHEs; various configurations in HP systems, depending on their load and environmental conditions; various nanofluids; and a comparison of nanofluids with different base metals are presented and discussed. Comparisons between various MCHEs and their respective limitations provide evidence-based guidelines for technology selection and designs for optimised operation at given environmental and load conditions.
KW - microchannel heat exchanger
KW - heating
KW - ventilation and air conditioning
KW - heat pump systems
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105003597836&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/machines13040333
DO - 10.3390/machines13040333
M3 - Review article
SN - 2075-1702
VL - 13
SP - 1
EP - 27
JO - Machines
JF - Machines
IS - 4
M1 - 333
ER -