Study on performance of Vuilleumier cycle heat pump for residential heating.

• Available energy losses and parameters in main components are analyzed in detail. • Hot regenerator's losses and parameters are the main factor deteriorating the efficiency. • The performance of Vuilleumier heat pump under different temperatures is studied. • The variations of COPh decrease with the cold temperature linearly and are small. Vuilleumier cycle heat pump (VHP) is a thermally driven heat pump and has huge potential for improving energy efficiency in residential heating. In this paper, performance of VHP is studied based on SAGE software. The errors between the experiment and simulation are in the range of −4.6 %∼4.5 % and −18.2 %∼7.4 % respectively for COP h and heating capacity. Based on developed model validated by experimental results, available energy losses (AEloss) are obtained and analyzed. Hot regenerator is the main component for AEloss and incomplete heat transfer is the main contribution for AEloss. Then, the effects of parameters on the performance are studied. And parameters are optimized. The results show that the improvement of COP h could be up to 3.6 %. Moreover, the performance and seasonal energy efficiency ratio of VHP in the cold region are carried out. The results show that seasonal COP could be up to 1.53 at −0.26 °C average ambient temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]