Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2022-12-27

HEAT PUMP SYSTEM USING A NEW AIR-SOURCE HEAT EXCHANGER WITH NO DEFROST AND OPERATING ON OFF-PEAK ELECTRICITY

Objective

To demonstrate a low cost direct expansion wind convector (wind evaporator) as an evaporator for a 6 kW residential air-to-air heat pump, without a defrost cycle. To compare the annual performance of this system to a conventional air-to-air heat pump with defrost controls. An annual economy of 1500 kWh/yr for the heat pump under consideration is estimated, due to the fact that no fans or defrost cycles are necessary.

The demonstration will take place in an old industrial building of traditional construction owned by University College Galaway.
Two similar zones of this building will be selected one to be heated by the wind evaporator heat pump and the other by a conventional one.
The prototype wind evaporator consists of fined copper tubing giving 0. 12 m2 exchange area per linear meter of tube.
The complete evaporator consists of 10 tubes for parallel freon flow and three rows of tubes. A 6 kW heat pump with a wind evaporator of about 8 m2 surface area and modified expansion controls will be installed to heat the selected zone equipped with an air heating system.
In order to quantify the annual energy performance of the wind evaporator, this heat pump will be compared to the conventional 6 kW air-to-air heat pump equipped with a defrost control.
- WIND EVAPORATOR :
Following the studies of the University College Galway (UCG) the evaporator is made of copper tubes with soldered fires. Optimisation of the evaporator has been done on base of tests during winter 87 - 88 with a brine convector.
The tests showed that frost growth on a single tube does not significantly the overall performance of the tube but, for a row of tubes, air blocage due to frost or ice bridging between tubes is the major reason for a deterioration of performance.
Optimal distance between tubes and angle between fins has been determined.
- HEAT PUMP :
An English manufacturer of heat pump was chosen because of the closer rating to the 6 kW of the project.
It was decided to keep the tubes of the evaporator horizontal to get a better oil return to the compressor, to choose a rotary compressor because of high risks of liquid slugs with this kind of evaporator and to use a thermostatic expansion valve to get a better control of the evaporation.
- INSTALLATION IN BUILDING : Two heat pumps - one with a classical fan assisted evaporator and the other with the wind evaporator - have been installed during summer 1988 as well as the monitoring equipment.
First measurements of weather conditions have been recorded without any problems.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

This project has not yet been classified with EuroSciVoc.
Be the first one to suggest relevant scientific fields and help us improve our classification service

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

projects.no_data

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

DEM - Demonstration contracts

Coordinator

ERINOVA INDUSTRIES LTD
EU contribution
No data
Address
111 PEARSE STREET, IDA ENTERPRISE CENTRE UNIT 16
2 Dublin
Ireland

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0