Experimental Study on the Performance of a Solar Heat Pump System

A solar heat pump system was designed and built. In this paper, the operation performance of the system was investigated experimentally. The effects of significant parameters such as the water temperature at the inlet and outlet of the evaporator, collector, and condenser and the solar radiation intensity were considered. When the water temperature at the condenser inlet was set at different values, the water temperature at the evaporator inlet was found to be proportional to the suction pressure and discharge pressure of the compressor and inversely proportional to the compression ratio. At different water temperatures at the evaporator inlet, the influence of the water temperature at the condenser outlet on the suction pressure was not obvious; however, the maximum change in the suction pressure was 0.9MPa. The power consumption of the compressor was hardly affected. Lower water temperature at the collector inlet contributes to improvement of its heat collection efficiency, and various factors should be considered in the design of the collector. The higher was the water temperature at the evaporator inlet and the lower was the water temperature at the condenser outlet, the larger was the found coefficient of performance (COP) of the heat pump unit COPhp, as well as the found COP of system COPsys. In addition, as the solar radiation intensity grew, the heating capacity and COPsys increased continuously, the maximum variation in COPsys being 0.4. It is hoped that this research will offer valuable insights for designing advanced solar heat pump (SHP) systems.