Alternatives à la compression de vapeur pour les applications de CVC dans le futur

Un rapport de mars 2014 du Département Américain de l'Energie identifie et évalue 17 technologies alternatives à la compression de vapeur.
A March 2014 report* prepared for the US Department of Energy by Navigant Consulting identifies and evaluates 17 technologies which could potentially replace traditional vapour-compression technology in residential and commercial HVAC applications.
It scores each on a number of criteria including energy saving potential, cost, complexity and likelihood of success.
The authors specify that while this study focused on air-conditioning applications, many of the technologies investigated might also apply to refrigeration applications.
While twenty-two technology options were considered, only stand-alone technologies were evaluated instead of those that are components of space-conditioning systems.
Pulse-tube refrigeration and vortex-tube refrigeration were screened out as not applicable to space-conditioning. A further three – Bernoulli heat pump, critical-flow refrigeration cycle and electrocaloric effect – were screened out as still being in the early stages of research and development.
The final ranking of technology options is as follows:

1. Thermoelastic: A technology based on the unique properties of shape-memory alloys (SMA). Thermoelastic cooling systems stress and release a SMA core that absorbs heat from, or rejects heat to, its surroundings;

2. Membrane heat pump: Driven by a vacuum pump, advanced-membrane heat pumps provide cooling and dehumidification and/or heating and humidification by transferring moisture across a number of membranes;

3. Evaporative liquid desiccant A/C: Evaporative liquid desiccant air conditioners consist of a primary channel that dries and cools incoming air using a liquid desiccant stream and a secondary channel that evaporatively cools a water layer using a portion of the dried air, thereby further cooling the supply air;

4. Magnetocaloric: Operates on the magnetocaloric effect, a phenomenon in which a paramagnetic material exhibits reversible temperature change when exposed to a changing magnetic field.

5. Vuilleumier heat pump: Similar to Stirling heat pumps, the Vuilleumier heat pump cyclically compresses and expands a gaseous working fluid between different volumes to produce a hot and cold side. With a high-temperature heat source, such as a gas burner, the system can generate space heating and cooling as well as water heating.

Other options are:

6. Evaporative cooling;
7. Thermoelectric;
8. Ground-coupled solid desiccant A/C;
9. Absorption heat pump;
10. Duplex-Stirling heat pump;
11. Thermoacoustic;
12. Adsorption Heat Pump;
13. Thermotunnelling;
14. Stand-alone solid desiccant A/C;
15. Stand-alone liquid desiccant A/C;
16. Ejector heat pump;
17. Brayton heat pump.

* Energy Savings Potential and RD&D Opportunities for Non-Vapor-Compression HVAC Technologies

The report in pdf format can be downloaded at: goo.gl/DtU1eF