A novel system for space heating has been developed taking advantage of the favourable characteristics of the transcritical CO{sub}2 cycle, where heat is rejected by cooling of supercritical gas at gliding temperature. By a proper design of a counter flow heat exchanger it is possible to heat air to high temperatures and thereby giving the driving force for circulation of air through the heat exchanger, in consequence without using a fan. A concept without a fan, here called a fan-less concept, would give several advantages; no noise, no power consumption for the fan and increased comfort with reduced air draft in the room. The concept may also be used for heat rejection in systems for light commercial applications or other applications where fan assisted heat rejection concepts are used today. An experimental study of a CO{sub}2 to air heat exchanger has been performed. The heat exchanger was made of a vertically finned aluminium profile. Tubes for CO{sub}2 were mounted in the base of the profile. CO{sub}2 at supercritical pressure flowing downwards through the profile was heating air flowing in the channels formed by the fins of the profile. In this way a perfect counter flow heat exchange was obtained. The prototype heat exchanger was 2000 mm high and 190 mm wide, with 45mm deep fins. A simulation model was developed and verified to give good accordance with the experimental data. The model was then used to study how different design parameters influence the efficiency of the heat exchanger. Only by altering the number of fins and the fin thickness of the tested profile, the heat output at a given condition could be increased to almost the double, meaning that the initial design was relatively far from optimal. With the original heat exchanger profile design concept a heat exchanger with height, width and depth of respectively 2000, 750 and 200 mm, would be required in order to achieve a heat output of 2500 W if the constraints for assumed acceptable efficiency was applied. If a heat exchanger with less height is preferred, the width will have to be increased in order to maintain about the same front area, width time height. Ideas has also been introduced for how to improve both the compactness and efficiency of the heat exchanger by introducing a compact counter flow heat exchanger in the lower part of the air flow channel. It is concluded that the new concept looks promising for use as the indoor heat exchanger in an air-to-air heat pump or as a gascooler for heat rejection in small commercial equipment, when using CO{sub}2 as refrigerant.
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