Exergy Analysis—A Useful Concept of Sustainability for Air Source Heat Pump System

Due to increasing energy demand, exergy analysis becomes necessary to use energy-efficient systems by minimizing losses. India is one of the largest markets of air source heat pump system. Taking this criterion into consideration, this study aims to investigate the performance of air source heat pump system. To identify the losses, exergy destruction in each component was determined. It was noticeable that exergy destruction of compressor was highest (40.76%) because of its non-isentropic compression and friction losses, followed by the expansion valve (36.03%), evaporator (15.72%) and condenser (7.5%). Effect of condenser temperature on second law efficiency varied linearly with decreasing nature. Effect of evaporator temperature on overall efficiency was studied. Coefficient of performance of the actual system (4.28) deviated from the theoretical COP (5.23) because of pressure loss in condenser and evaporator.