Energy, environmental and economic analysis of electric vapour compression and gas driven absorption heat pumps for single-family houses

The aim of this paper is to compare energy consumptions, CO2 emissions, and operative costs of condensing boilers, electric vapour compression heat pumps and gas driven absorption heat pumps to provide space heating and domestic hot water. The analysis is performed for 140 m2 single-family houses in five different Italian cities whose envelope features depend on the location. For each location, two different envelope conditions are considered. The first one is a non-insulated building, while the second one is the same building, but an external thermal insulation is added on vertical walls and roof. To avoid internal renovation, radiators are maintained as emission system. Combined dynamic simulations are performed to appreciate building and system interactions. A 6 second time step is set to evaluate properly interactions and the DHW profile demand. In addition, the GHP dynamic model is a grey box model experimentally validated. The results show that electric vapour compression heat pumps reach the highest non-renewable primary energy savings (>32%) compared to condensing boilers, but their operative costs are higher due to the higher specific cost of electricity in Italy. Gas driven absorption heat pumps achieve a lower consumption reduction than electric heat pumps (>22%), but they have also the minimum operative cost among the three technologies.