A Perspective Evaluation Methodology for Economic Feasibility of Low Temperature Sustainable Energy Source in Heating Mode Technology

Abstract

The economical and clean environment issues for a sustainable energy source at low temperature (LT) were considered and compared to natural gas technology as a fossil fuel source. The friendly environment refrigerants R410A, R407C, R717, R134a, and R600a were analyzed in an approximately 500 kW heating load output cascade heat pump. The heat pump was investigated at an intermediate temperature of 35 °C, high temperature (HT) cycle condenser at 70 °C, and compressors isentropic efficiency of 70%. All analyzed refrigerant pairs exhibited high heating season performance factor (HSPF), and it was ranged between 7 and 8.5. The thermal performance comparison revealed that the HSPF for R717/R600a showed the highest values among other refrigerant pairs. The results showed that at LT cycle evaporator temperature range of −10 to −2 °C, the natural gas technology revealed a higher season heating cost values than that of the heat pump plant by up to 10%. On the contrary at lower LT evaporator temperature, the heat pump plant technology exhibited a higher season heating cost lied in the range of 4–13.6% than that of the natural gas system. At compressors isentropic efficiency of 90%, the seasonal heating cost of the heat pump plant was lower than that of the natural gas technology by the range of 9–25% at test conditions. The mean seasonal CO2 amount released by the natural gas firing technology from all tested refrigerant pairs ranged between 2.1 and 2.5 times that of the heat pump plant technology for the investigated LT evaporator temperature range.