Experimental Research on Performance of Heat Pump Using Shower Waste Water as Heat Source
As we know, there is plenty of waste hot water produced by families’ shower or Sauna and drained directly into the environment. It causes high energy consumption and heat pollution to the environment. In order to recover the heat of shower waste water to save energy, we developed a small scale shower waste water source heat pump (SWWHP) water heater and carried out experiments on it to study its heating performance. Experiments showed that this heat pump water heater system had advantages such as quick starting, compact structure, no need of hot water tank, stable operation and energy saving, etc. It could be used to supply hot water above 40°C for shower or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). Measured data showed that during the whole year, when the temperatures of waste water and city water were 20.1~35°C, 20.1~30°C, respectively, it could supply hot water at volumetric flow rate of 2.5~9.6L/min and temperature of 40.1~51.2°C and its heating coefficient of performance (COPh) varied in the range of 3.06~4.81. It could supply enough shower hot water in the whole year in South China and the energy saving efficiency was obvious. Analysis also showed that the COPh was closely relevant to the ratio of temperature differences of waste water and hot water, i.e., ΔTw/ΔTh. The correlation equation of COPh and ΔTw/ΔTh was obtained by method of data regression and it could be used to evaluate the performance of the SWWHP water heater system with error of ±6%.