Energy Sources Part A-recovery Utilization and Environmental Effects, Vol.32, No.3, 232-245, 2010
The Modeling of the Efficiency of the Heat Pump Supported by Heat Pipe with Solar Energy
In this article, the efficiency of a heat pump supported by a heat pipe with solar energy was experimentally examined. The solar collector with heat pipe was built with a size of 1.1 m(2). The ethanol and R134a were used as cooling liquid in the heat pipe and in the heat pump cycle, respectively. In experiments, the coefficient of performance (COP) was observed to change in a range of 1.39-4.37. A mathematical model was developed under MATLAB using experimental results. In the developed model, hourly radiations, atmosphere temperatures, and water temperatures in the condenser as input data and COPs as output data were used. For the model, R-2, RMS, and MAPE values-which are errors known as Absolute Fraction of Variance, Root-Mean-Squared Error, and Mean Absolute Percentage Error-are 0.998878, 0.108073, and 3.588857, respectively. This study showed that the heat pump supported by solar-assisted heat pipe can be applied and the developed mathematical model can also be used to determine the efficiency of the system for further applications.