Analysis of the on-site performance of a mini exhaust air heat pump integrated into a low energy detached house situated in Belgium.

Nowadays, the building sector accounts for 40 % of the total EU energy consumption. In that context, the construction sector is today on a critical path to help decarbonize the European economy by 2050. For this purpose, sustainable cooling and heating technologies should be developed and on-site measurements may confirm the performance measured under laboratory conditions. This paper presents the analysis of the on-site performance of a mini exhaust air heat pump integrated into a low energy detached house situated in Belgium. The system consists of five components: a simple exhaust ventilation system, an exhaust air heat pump, a backup electrical resistance, a domestic hot water storage tank and fan-coil units to heat the building. In that system, the heat source of the heat pump is the air from the ventilation system and the heat pump heating capacity is limited to 1400 Watts. The totality of the domestic hot water is produced by the heat pump but only a fraction of the space heating demand is covered by the machine. For this reason, this machine is particularly suitable for apartment buildings characterized by a low space heating demand and a significant energy demand related to domestic hot water production. In the first part of the paper, the characteristics of the building case study and the different components of the system are presented. The second part of the paper describes the sensors placed in the building used to measure the on-site performance of the machine. Lastly, the on-site performance of the machine is presented. The influence of the main variables (exhaust water temperature, supply air temperature, outside temperature, etc.) on the performance is also discussed.