Performance characterization of an indoor air source heat pump water heater for residential applications in Canada

Summary Air source heat pump water heater (ASHPWH) is a relatively new addition to delivering hot water at reasonably high efficiency. ASHPWH systems have achieved significant acceptance for mild to warm climate regions where space heating is minimal or none. However, limited performance mapping is available on these water heaters in extreme cold climatic conditions, such as Canada. The paper has examined the long-term performance of this technology in Canadian context. The investigation has established the performance characteristics of ASHPWH unit through a series of pre-defined indoor tests and theoretical simulations. The coefficient of performance and other critical parameters of ASHPWH were established and discussed in detail. A model was developed, validated, and used to show the impact of such type of water heater on the overall energy consumption in the house. The results indicate that the summer cooling decreases and the winter heating increases in the house with an indoor ASHPWH unit. Nevertheless, the net effect leads to 21.3% reduction in the total electricity consumption of the house (space heating, cooling, and water heating). Research provided an accurate performance prediction of ASHPWHs for year-round applications in Canadian homes.

[1]  Rodney Anthony Stewart,et al.  Air source heat pump water heaters in residential buildings in Australia: Identification of key performance parameters , 2015 .

[2]  Keyan Wang,et al.  Taylor polynomial method and error estimation for a kind of mixed Volterra-Fredholm integral equations , 2014, Appl. Math. Comput..

[3]  Pradeep Bansal,et al.  Energy consumption modeling of air source electric heat pump water heaters , 2010 .

[4]  Arif Hepbasli,et al.  A review of heat pump water heating systems , 2009 .

[5]  Alan S. Fung,et al.  Simulation and experimental investigation of two hybrid solar domestic water heaters with drain water heat recovery , 2015 .

[6]  P. Borella,et al.  Water ecology of Legionella and protozoan: environmental and public health perspectives. , 2005, Biotechnology annual review.

[7]  Alan S. Fung,et al.  Comparative thermal performances of a ground source heat pump and a variable capacity air source heat pump systems for sustainable houses , 2015 .

[8]  Ian Paul Knight,et al.  Residential Cogeneration Systems: European and Canadian Residential Non-HVAC Electric and DHW Load Profiles For Use in Simulating the Performance of Residential Cogeneration Systems , 2007 .

[9]  P. G. Rousseau,et al.  Demand side management for water heating installations in South African commercial buildings , 2001 .

[10]  Van D Baxter,et al.  Impact of HPWH Placement on Water Heating Performance and Effect on Air Temperature in its Immediate Environ , 2014 .

[11]  H. Willem,et al.  Review of energy efficiency and system performance of residential heat pump water heaters , 2017 .

[12]  Alan S. Fung,et al.  Performance of two domestic solar water heaters with drain water heat recovery units: Simulation and experimental investigation , 2015 .

[13]  Alan S. Fung,et al.  Heating and cooling performance characterisation of ground source heat pump system by testing and TRNSYS simulation , 2015 .