Experimental study of a novel household exhaust air heat pump enhanced by indirect evaporative cooling.

This paper presents an experimental study of a novel household ventilator with exhaust air heat pump enhanced by indirect evaporative cooling. In this study, a prototype was made according to this theory and tested on the test rig. The test was carried out to evaluate the energy performance of the system during the cooling season. During the test, the thermal performances of the prototype under four different operating modes were comprehensively studied. In the typical summer conditions, the prototype operating as an indirect evaporative cooler followed by an evaporative condenser heat pump shows the highest cooling capacity at 4.27 kW and energy efficiency ratio (EER) at 5.12, which is a great performance improvement compared with that of conventional operating methods. The results of variable conditions tests show that this system can operate efficiently under different summer ambient conditions with the EER varying from 4.16 to 5.65. Besides, a comparison with other prototypes found in existing literature was also made in this study. Give consideration to compact and energy efficiency, the novel ventilation system shows a good academic value and application prospect in energy saving air-conditioning domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]