Cooling performance assessment of a slinky closed loop lake water heat pump system under the climate conditions of Pakistan

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a closed loop lake water heat pump (LWHPs) system based on the slinky coiled configuration. Initially, a mathematical model is developed in the Engineering Equation Solver (EES) for the heat pump system and the submerged coils in a lake. System performance is determined for the submerged slinky copper coils under the various operating conditions. Afterwards, parametric analysis is performed considering different influencing parameters, such as the lake water temperature, ambient temperature, and mass flow rate of the circulating fluid at constant lake depth of 4 ft. The experimental setup is developed for 3.51 kW cooling capacity after cooling load calculation for a small room. In the current study, slinky copper coils are used to exchange heat with lake water. The experimental setup is installed in Taxila, Pakistan, and the system's performance is analyzed during selected days. After experimentation based on hourly and daily operation characteristics, it is observed that the lake water temperature has significant influence on the heat transfer rate between slinky coil and lake water. While the lake water temperature in summer decreases and increases in winter with the depth. The resulted daily average coefficient of performance (COP) of the system is within the range of 3.24-3.46 during the selected days of cooling season. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the LWHP systems can be considered a viable solution for Pakistan having a well-established canal system.