Fluid Selection and Parametric Analysis on Condensation Temperature and Plant Height for a Thermogravimetric Heat Pump

The Thermogravimetric Heat Pump (TGHP) is a non-conventional system, implementing a reverse cycle, the main difference of which from the usual vapor compression (Rankine) cycle is a quasi-isothermal compression of the working fluid by a high heat capacity carrier fluid. Previous studies showed that employing HFC134a or PF5050 as working fluids may be promising in terms of thermodynamic performance, though the corresponding required plant heights confine its application to tall buildings (from minimum height of 10–12 storeys to skyscrapers). Accordingly, an investigation has been carried out in the present study in order to determine a group of fluids which allow lower heights under the same input conditions. In order to investigate the performance of the system and the required plant height, operation of a 100 kW TGHP has been simulated for 17 different fluids. Accordingly, the corresponding COPs and required heights are determined and based on the achieved COPs, the optimum fluid for each range of building height is selected. The resulting plant heights range from 20 m to nearly 200 m and R245ca is shown to be the most promising fluid for the lowest plant height range. A parametric study is next carried out in order to study the effect of variations in the condensation temperature and the dimensionless plant height on the performance of the system. The obtained results demonstrate that an increase in the former from 313 K to 348 K, for almost all of the analyzed fluids, causes a reduction of around 50% in the COP. It is also shown that, almost independent of the employed fluid, the maximum values of COP are reached for a dimensionless plant height of around 1.8. Moreover, all the analyzed fluids show basically the same COP trend and, at the same operating conditions, the COP values for all fluids are within a 10% range of variation. This leads to the conclusion that the thermophysical properties of the employed fluid mainly influences the required height of the system, while the COP values remain in a relatively small range.