REDUCING CO2 EMISSIONS WITH HEAT-PUMP SYSTEMS

Many countries aim to reduce their primary energy demand and CO2 emissions, In the northern hemisphere, domestic heating and the supply of hot water are the cause of a great part of these emissions. This paper presents a discussion of the potential of various compression and absorption heat pump systems for reducing the CO2 emissions. A comparison with cogeneration systems or furnaces is presented. Compared to a standard oil fired furnace, the CO2 emission is only slightly reduced by using a state of the art compression heat pump and electricity from a coal fired power plant. Yet there is a way to reduce emissions significantly even when coal is used as fuel. The combination of coal fired cogeneration plants with compression heat pumps is a very efficient way to decrease the emission level for heating systems. For gas fired absorption heat pumps or engine driven heat pumps the CO2 emission is smaller still. In the future, compression heat pumps can make contribution to CO2 reduction either by using CO2 free or CO2 low electricity, or by improving the COP to values better than 4.0 Some results for different combined heating and refrigeration systems are presented. In this case, advanced absorption cycles or compression-absorption cycles can reduce the CO2 emission by Up to 75%, compared to presently used standard systems.