DESIGN, MODELING AND EXPERIMENTATION OF A REVERSIBLE HP-ORC PROTOTYPE

This paper presents an innovative system comprising a heat pump connected to a solar roof and a geothermal heat exchanger. This heat pump is also able to invert its cycle and operate as an ORC. By using the whole rooftop (hereunder called “absorber”) as a heat source, a large amount of heat is generated throughout the year. This heat is used in priority to cover the building annual heating needs and the surplus heat generated during the summer is utilized to generate electricity in a so-called HP/ORC module. This paper will thus focus on these two main points: designing of the prototype and results from experimentation. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of such a prototype with encouraging performance in ORC and HP modes. Experimentally, a COP of 4.2 is reached in heat pump mode and a global efficiency of 5.6 is obtained in ORC mode. Possible means of improvement and perspectives are finally described.