Domestic-scale combined heat-and-power system incorporating a heat pump: analysis of a prototype plant

This paper introduces an innovative domestic scale combined heat-and-power plant (CHP), incorporating a heat pump (HP) for single-dwelling applications. The incorporation of a heat pump enhances the flexibility of a domestic scale CHP plant to satisfy domestic energy demand economically. The development, testing and subsequent thermodynamic analysis of the prototype plant are presented. First law thermodynamic analysis of experimental results is compared to equivalent second law analysis. Analysis of experimental results practically demonstrates that heat-pump incorporation satisfies extremely low domestic electrical requirements economically, whilst delivering relatively high thermal output, without resorting to electricity export.2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.