Improvement And Experimental Studies On Multi-functional Air-conditioning Water Heater

With the improvement of people’s living standards and the frequent appearanceof the extreme climate globally, comfortable indoor environment and adequate watersupply are also required increasingly. Energy consumption of air conditionings andwater heaters increases dramatically, which becomes the main force of energyconsumption in people’s daily life. Therefore, the study and promotion ofmulti-functional air conditioning water heater which can improve the utilization ofenergy and equipments, will greatly reduce energy consumption and mean much tothe sustainable development of society.Based on the analysis of condensation heat recovery and the research ofmulti-functional air conditioning water heater, a new device with a double-flowaccumulator was presented. When the operation mode was switched or the devicewas operated in different modes, the double-flow accumulator which mainly makesuse of the pressure difference between the condenser and the evaporator canautomatically adjust the amount of circular refrigerant within the system so that thesystem is more stable and efficient.A set of multi-functional air conditioning water heater experimental prototypewas designed and built up. A series of experiments were carried out in summer,autumn and winter under different operating modes. The amount of refrigerantcharge, throttle opening degree, outdoor temperature and the recovery ofcondensation heat, all of which were discussed have an effect on various parametersand performance of the system. Research focused on the regulation performance ofthe double-flow accumulator under different operating modes. Meanwhile, accordingto the problems in the experiment, some improvements were proposed for the similardesign in the future.Experimental results showed that, the optimal charge amounts was7.0kg, itsCOP reached around5.59on average in the mode of space cooling and hot watermode when the outdoor temperature in summer was (32±1)℃. In the mode of producing hot water, its COP was up to3.20in autumn and winter. The experimentalresults show that the multi-functional equipment is of high performance and energysaving. To some extent, the double-flow accumulator can automatically adjust theamount of the circular refrigerant within the system in different modes, and canreduce the liquid refrigerant accumulated in the heat exchangers so that the system ismore stable and efficient.