Determining of the optimal design of a closed loop solar dual source heat pump system coupled with a residential building application

Graphical abstract: Operation of the system in heating mode. - Highlights: • We examine the control function in the level of heat pump and collector. • We examine the temporal evolution of the temperature and energy in the all components of the system. • A better system with a significant energy saving was achieved. • The system gives good results in all operating states. - Abstract: This work highlights the results on the coupling of a flat plate collector coupled with a dual source heat pump system and a heat exchanger for building application. The novelty point of this work is to integrate a heat exchanger in the floor and in the interstitial space of the residential house roof in order to minimize the consumed electric power. This technology defining the operational state of the system has been developed and adapted in the present investigation by adopting the Tunisian climate. The dimensioning of this installation for different component makes it possible to operate the hot water heating systems ecologically. Hence, our objective is to ameliorate the performance of the system using the solar radiation converted to the thermal energy in the level of the flat plate collector and the heat pump. A several experimental data have been added for realizing a numerical model based on TRNSYS software. From this point of view, a numerical model was improved in building application using a 150 m² as surface area of the building which consists of two floor zones. The dual source heat pump was coupled with a ground heat exchanger (GHE) with 0.2 m of depth. The distance between two consecutive tubes is 0.3 m and the surface area of the solar collector is 8 m². The simulation results have been obtained for 48 h operation in January and all inputs data of the system have been predicted during 48 h and 6 months of heating in Tunisia. It was demonstrated that the COP of the dual source heat pump was enhanced with the increase of the solar radiation during the typical sunny day in the heating season. In addition, the COP strengthened in proportion to the solar collector area, as well. Meanwhile, the numerical model predicts a gain of energy which exceeds 50% compared with a conventional heating system for 25 years as viewing time.