A STUDY OF NEW LOCAL HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING SCHEMES BASED ON THE MAISOTSENKO CYCLE

Significant consumption of energy resources in the production of heat in the winter season and air conditioning in the summer season is the main problem of municipal heat-and-power engineering. Therefore, local energy-efficient heating systems and climatic heating and cooling systems based on renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly important. The heat pumps, based on the Rankine cycle, which use the energy of atmospheric air, soil, and wastewater, as well as air conditioning systems, based on the Maisotsenko cycle, using the psychrometric energy of the environment, have become widespread in recent years. Theoretical analysis shows that a combination of these cycles makes it possible to achieve high energy efficiency and create fundamentally new systems of heating and cooling the living spaces. This paper presents the results of a comparative experimental study of two heat supply and cooling schemes based on a combination of the Maisotsenko and Rankine cycles. An experimental bench of the combined cycle with thermal power of 28 kW with the power of the heat pump of 3 kW was developed for the experimental study. A serial M-cycle heat-and-mass exchanger manufactured by Coolerado Corporation, USA, was used in the design of the bench. Studies have shown high energy efficiency of both heat supply schemes which was determined by the coefficient of performance (COP): 6.3–7.21 for the first scheme and 7.44–9.73 for the second one. When conditioning the room air, the Rankine heat pump was not used, so the energy was consumed solely by the fan to pump air through the M-cycle heat-and-mass exchanger and the air conditioning system. In this case, the coefficient of performance was 10.49–16.3