Performance Analysis of Novel Direct-Condensation Heating Panels Integrated with Air Source Heat Pump System on Thermal Economy and System Efficiencies

As an efficient heating terminal, direct-condensation terminals are increasingly being applied. This study proposes novel direct-condensation heating panels with different aspect ratios, which have been optimized in structure and reduced in copper tube length. To quantify their thermal superiority, the proposed panels’ thermal economic performance and system efficiencies are investigated. Compared with previous heating terminals, the vertical temperature difference provided by the proposed panels is reduced by 1.1 ± 0.2 °C, improving thermal comfort. Meanwhile, the system COP is competitive among existing direct-condensation heating terminals. The average heating capacity per cost of the proposed panels reaches 5.4 W/USD, which is 24.1%~46.3% higher than that of previous panels. In addition, the impact of the aspect ratio shows that the panel with a high ratio has advantages in thermal economic performance and system efficiencies. The annual running cost and the system task efficiency of the panel with a ratio of 2.22 are 74.81 USD and 48.5%, respectively, which are 4.7% lower and 0.9% higher than that with a ratio of 0.45, respectively. The developed direct-condensation heating panels help to optimize the heating technology of air source heat pumps, while the evaluation methodology and aspect ratio results are suitable for optimizing other heating terminals.