Emerging Sustainable and Energy-Efficient Technologies in Heat Pumps for Residential Heating

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Background

With increasing population and welfare, the demand for energy used in the residential sector is increasing rapidly. According to an IEA report, residential heating alone accounts for about 20% of global final energy consumption. Inefficient heating will cause both energy waste and potential environmental pollution. Heat pumps, due to the energy efficient and environmentally friendly advantages have achieved good growth in past decades, rapidly becoming one of the most important solutions for efficient heating and attractive alternatives to replace fossil fuel heating systems. With pressures to reduce carbon emissions and increasing requirements on renewable energy, heat pumps will play a more important role in residential heating and a significantly larger share of energy use. In recent years, to promote the application of heat pumps in residential heating, there have been a great deal of efforts on applying and studying emerging sustainable and energy-efficient technologies in heat pumps.

Compact structures were proposed to increase efficiency, reduce cost and space, including the microchannel heat exchanger and the compact compressor. Innovative design of multistage cycles, and development of new refrigerants also provide critical methods to improve energy efficiency. Efforts have been made to develop hybrid heat pump systems which can integrate multiple types of heat pumps or apply various heat sources, especially renewable sources. Among the uses of renewable energy, solar energy is an innovative way of reducing fossil energy resources which has been integrated with heat pumps. Recent research on optimizing existing solar assisted heat pumps, advancing heat transfer, and designing PV/T heat pump etc., has been carried out. To provide wide flexibility services, such as load shifting, peak shaving, thermal energy storage has been designed and integrated with heat pumps, like phase change materials (PCM). Hybrid heat pump systems or hybrid energy systems integrated with a heat pump, and hybrid systems with various heat sources have also been investigated to meet the different heating demands and to advance efficiency objectives. Due to the complexity of the system and increasing demand from end users, innovation on control strategies has been proposed with the dynamic modelling of heat pump systems, such as new data-based models and new applications of artificially intelligent techniques. Meanwhile, efforts have also been made on developing huge low-cost sensors for data collection and developing robust dynamic models of heat pumps for optimum control or advanced intelligent control. Such progress helps to advance the sustainability and efficiency of heat pumps and these recently developed technologies provide new insights into heat pumps. Hence, the target of this Research Topic is to present the leading edge of high energy efficiency technologies and sustainable methods used in heat pumps for residential heating.

Original research and review papers on the following potential topics are welcomed but not limited to:
1. Compact design of integrated heat pumps with high efficiency and low cost, including microchannel heat exchangers, compact compressors, etc.;
2. Optimization of existing thermal cycles, development of new refrigerants or mixtures;
3. Hybrid heat pump systems (integration with multi energy resources/services, control strategies, etc.);
4. Thermal energy storage technologies integrated with heat pumps to provide system wide flexibility services, such as load shifting, peak shaving;
5. Solar assisted heat pumps, including direct-expansion solar-assisted heat pump, PV/T heat pump (new design of PV module), new connection configurations between solar and the heat pump, development of micro-channel tubes, integrated with other renewable resources (wind or geothermal);
6. Technology progress in defrosting within an air source heat pump, anti-fouling in a water/sewage source heat pump, environmental problems of ground source heat pumps;
7. Modelling of heat pump systems, such as physical based models and data-based models (black-box and grey-box models) and new application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for the dynamic operation and for the system design;
8. Flexible operating and control technologies;
9. Fault detection, diagnosis strategies, low-cost sensors, and big data analysis;
10. Fluid, heat, and mass transfer mechanism in heat pump systems;
11. Advanced heat exchanger techniques applied to heat pumps;
12. Advanced compressors for heat pump applications;
13. Integration of heat pumps with multi-energy systems;
14. Life cycle environmental and cost assessments;
15. Reviews and opinions on research needs in the field.

Keywords: Heat pump, sustainable energy, energy-efficient, energy recovery, smart technology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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