Title: Simultaneous thermodynamic and economic enhancement of heat pumps based on a new method for avoidable irreversibility assessment

Authors: Volodymyr Voloshchuk; Paride Gullo; Olena Nekrashevych

Addresses: National Technical University of Ukraine 'Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute', 03056, Kyiv, Ukraine ' University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Alsion 2 6400 Sønderborg, Denmark ' National Technical University of Ukraine 'Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute', 03056, Kyiv, Ukraine

Abstract: The paper presents a new method aimed at the simultaneous thermodynamic and economic enhancement of air-source and water-source heat pumps. The novel approach allows estimating the avoidable parts of the exergy destruction and investment expenditures by avoiding the need for ideal process introduction, being the most critical issue associated with the application of the existing advanced exergy-based methodology. In fact, within the proposed new method the values of the avoidable parts of investment expenditures of the k^th component belonging to the considered heat pumps are determined assuming a greatly efficient component rather than not an extremely inefficient one. The proposed approach was applied to domestic hot water heat pumps using R410A and R134a to evaluate its potential. The results obtained suggested that at the investigated operation conditions the condenser and the evaporator are components for which minimising irreversibilities can provide simultaneous thermodynamic and economic enhancement.

Keywords: exergy analysis; avoidable exergy destruction; heat pumps; component interactions; thermodynamic improvement; economic improvement; exergoeconomic analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2022.123598

International Journal of Exergy, 2022 Vol.38 No.2, pp.158 - 175

Received: 01 Apr 2021
Accepted: 18 Aug 2021
Published online: 29 Jun 2022 *

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