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New Review of solar-assisted air source heat pumps for the domestic sector reported

15 September 2021

A new review paper published by Liwei Yang et al. from Prof. Huasheng Wang's group, comprehensively summarises recent advances of solar assisted air source heat pumps for space heating and/or hot water.

The paper, published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, reviews recent developments in system configurations, solar collector, thermal energy storage and defrosting as well as the perspective areas of further investigations. It highlights that the integration of solar thermal energy and thermal energy storage to air source heat pump significantly increases Coefficient of Performance (COP). Most solar assisted air source heat pumps achieve COP from 2 to 6. The direct expansion and advanced indirect expansion solar assisted air source heat pumps can achieve COP higher than 6 and up to 10. In terms of function, the direct expansion solar assisted air source heat pumps suits to provision of hot water and the advanced indirect expansion solar assisted air source heat pumps suits to provision of hot water and space heating. The transition to new-generation, high energy efficiency and green refrigerants is currently in progress.

The solar-assisted air source heat pump shows great potential as a promising energy-saving heating technology, which integrates solar collector, thermal energy storage and air source heat pump. The information presented in this paper is beneficial to the researchers, small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups suppling renewable energy system technologies, heating engineers and service workers, energy policy and decision makers, environmental activists and communities.

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Updated by: Huasheng Wang