Experimental investigation on heating performance of a gas engine-driven heat pump system with R410A

In this study, the performance characteristics of a gas engine-driven heat pump (GHP) system for heating ap-plications were experimentally investigated. A novel energy-efficient air-source GHP experimental platform was designed based on scroll compressors with R410A. The changes in heating capacity (Q(h)), gas consumption power (P-gas), compressor power (P-comp), primary energy ratio (PER), and coefficient of performance (COP) were obtained under varying conditions of condenser water flow rate G(w) (6.10-15.25 m(3)/h), water inlet temperature t(w), in (24.0-44.2 degrees C), engine speed N-eng (1200-2400 r/min), and ambient air temperature T-amb (-15-7 degrees C). The performances of the four heating modes (mode-1 to mode-4) were compared at an ambient air temperature of-20 degrees C. The results showed that t(w,in), N-eng, and T-amb had significant influences on heating performance, whereas G(w) had a slight impact. Compared with other heating modes, mode-4, wherein the recovered waste heat was only transferred to the heating water, could improve the heating performance of the GHP system. In the mode-4 heating experiments, PER was between 0.981 and 2.155, the rate of waste heat recovery was between 49.12 % and 77.70 %, and the engine thermal efficiency was between 27.02 % and 33.24 %.