Experimental Study of a Novel PV/T- Air Composite Heat Pump Hot Water System

Solar energy utilization and heat pump are common technologies of renewable energy utilization for solving the problem of energy crisis and environmental pollution in present. This paper proposed a novel PV/T-air composite heat pump hot water system. The system was comprised of independently developed flat plate solar PV/T collector based on micro-channel heat pipe array and air source heat pump, which were combined by a new composite evaporator. The performance of the system were experimentally studied, COP of heat pump reduced from 5.61 to 1.69 and the average was 3.03. Comprehensive COPsys of PV/T-air composite heat pump system ranged from 6.07 to 1.33, the average was 2.99. The result showed the system was worthy of promotion and application.