An analytical model is proposed to evaluate the performance of a Direct Expansion Solar-Assisted Heat Pump under a given environmental condition. These thermal machines commonly employ uncovered flat plate solar collectors, and given this, the convection phenomenon is taken into account as well as the effect of the diffuse and reflected solar radiation in addition to the normal beam radiation absorbed by the tilted surface of the collectors. The heat pump cycle is modelled through a first law of thermodynamics approach in order to compute the heat yielded through condensation and the minimum heat required by the volume of water in the thermal storage unit. Consequently, the thermal capacity of the heat pump, the ratio at which the system yields heat to a given load of water, is calculated and discussed. The results of the model proposed are compared with the experimental data provided by three research papers with experiments conducted in different geographic coordinates and test rigs operating during diverse atmospheric conditions. A maximum relative error of 20% was obtained and furthermore, a statistical analysis of the data was conducted having found that there is no significant statistical difference between the analytical and experimental data samples within the 95% confidence interval. Finally, based on the thermal capacity, the performance of the heat pump is evaluated and a multi-objective optimization technique is implemented to obtain the best possible combination of factors to further enhance the performance of the heat pump.

No abstract

The present work conducts an evaluation of the feasibility and the overall performance and consequent optimization of a direct expansion solar assisted heat pump (DXSAHP) employed for domestic water heating. For the study conducted R134a, R404A, R407C and R410A working fluids were evaluated as well as the use of four, six and eight flat-plate solar collectors and a worktime ranging from 1 to 6 h. The case study is based in Mexico City with a 300 L container and a hot water outlet temperature of 51 °C. The paper introduces a new evaluation criterion based on the thermal capacity and all the evaluations conducted throughout this research revolve around this performance metric. The results show that, the system would require at least 4 h of operation to achieve the outlet temperature. Additionally, it was found that the R410A refrigerant has the best heat transfer properties; with an average condensation heat rate of 6.31 kW, followed by the R407C with 5.72 kW, the R404A with 5.42 kW and the R134a with 5.18 kW. Diversely, the R134a refrigerant requires 0.402 kW of compression work, 62% less than the R410A, which requires 1.06 kW. Consequently, R134a delivers the highest COP, which ranges from 7 to 14, followed by the R407C and R404A refrigerants, which present a similar behaviour between them, with COP ranging from 5 to 9 and 4 to 8, respectively, and finally the R410A, achieving the lowest COP, ranging from 3.5 to 6.5. Moreover, it was found that the R134a presents a higher dispersion regarding the energy exchange rate, which reveals that it is the fluid most susceptible to external factors, such as the weather. Contrarily, the remaining refrigerants present a more consistent performance. Finally, the optimization revealed that the R407C refrigerant is the most suitable given that it requires 20% less compression work than the R404A. This provides the heat pump system with a steadier behaviour, a COP ranging from 7 to 8, 30% higher than R410A, a worktime decrease of 1.5 h and heat transfer area of 5.5 flat-plate solar collectors, equivalent to a 31% reduction, both compared to R134a.

A computationally-supported experimental technique is presented, to measure height of luminous flames, using convolution and density-based spatial clustering for image processing. The experimental setup employs a high-definition camera array to capture flame imagery from 0°, 45° and 90° visualization planes. The volumetric fuel flow was ranged from 350 to 1800 cc/min and images of the resulting flame structure were captured and measured. Results show that output measurements are affected by both the volumetric fuel flow and the visualization plane. Whilst the former is evidently the most significant factor, the latter was found to be relevant, since several flame features, particularly, flame tilt and flickering, are only perceivable through specific visualization planes; attributed to uneven flame structure due non-homogeneous thermal stress. The experimental technique proposed yields an overall statistical tolerance of 1.29 cm and an expanded uncertainty of 0.609 cm (~11.5%). From these results, the test is considered successful and the proposed experimental technique is deemed to be on par with the already existing ones. The utilization of spatial density clustering of image gridded data has only been tested for this implementation; being severely constrained by the sample size and density variability of the data. Consequently, care should be exercised. Nonetheless, this approach was found to inherently recognize flame front edge, and mitigate variations of pixel value due change in flame intensity, normalizing image processing, hence, it is proposed as a viable alternative for flame feature/structure visualization and estimation, and further research is encouraged.

No abstract