Abstract
In this study, heating performance of the air-cooled heat pump with vapor-injection (VI) cycles, re-heater and solar heat storage tank was investigated experimentally. Devices used in the experiment were comprised of a VI compressor, re-heater, economizer, variable evaporator, flat-plate solar collector for hot water, thermal storage tank, etc. As working fluid, refrigerant R410A for heat pump and propylene glycol (PG) for solar collector were used. In this experiment, heating performance was compared by three cycles, A, B and C. In case of Cycle B, heat exchange was conducted between VI suction refrigerant and inlet refrigerant of condenser by re-heater (Re-heater in Fig. 3, No. 3) (Cycle B), and Cycle A was not use re-heater on the same operating conditions. In case of Cycle C, outlet refrigerant from evaporator go to thermal storage tank for getting a thermal energy from solar thermal storage tank while re-heater also used. As a result, Cycle C reached the target temperature of water in a shorter time than Cycle B and Cycle A. In addition, it was founded that, as for the coefficient of heating performance($COP_h$), the performance in Cycle C was improved by 13.6% higher than the performance of Cycle B shown the average $COP_h$ of 3.0 and by 18.9% higher than the performance of Cycle A shown the average $COP_h$ of 2.86. From this results, It was confirmed that the performance of heat pump system with refrigerant re-heater and VI cycle can be improved by applying solar thermal energy as an auxiliary heat source.
