Experimental study on the performance of a multi-functional domestic air conditioner with integrated water heater

Highlights: • A novel MDACWH was presented and experimentally studied. • MDACWH has high performance on making domestic hot water and air conditioning. • The time for heating water reduced to 22.0 min after modification. • Average COP reached 4.32, which was 1.58 times higher than the unmodified unit. - Abstract: The recovery of condenser heat is concerned one of the most effective methods to curb energy consumption in residential dwellings. Aiming at recovering the condenser heat of domestic air conditioner, this paper experimentally studied a multi-functional domestic air conditioner with integrated water heater (MDACWH) which can effectively provide space – cooling and domestic hot water simultaneously. The dynamic operation characteristics, such as hot water supply and energy efficiency were tested to verify the availability of the MDACWH. The results showed that the MDACWH can effectively heat the domestic hot water without losing its cooling capacity. It was also found that with the use of MDACWH, the coefficient of comprehensive energy performance of the MDACWH was about 1.58 times higher than that of the unmodified experimental unit. Furthermore, the water-heating time was shorten remarkably from 128.5 min to 22.0 min. The novel domestic air conditioner, compared with the unmodified initial prototype, can be more practical and provide significant energy savings in space-cooling and hot water supply.