High Temperature Heat Pump Integration using Zeotropic Working Fluids for Spray Drying Facilities

This paper presents an analysis of high temperature heat pumps in the industrial sector and demonstrates the approach of using zeotropic mixtures to enhance the overall efficiency. Many energy intensive processes in industry, such as drying processes, require heat at a temperature above 100 °C and show a large potential to reuse the excess heat from exhaust gases.

This study analyses a heat pump application with an improved integration by choosing the working fluid as a mixture in such a way, that the temperature glide during evaporation and condensation matches the temperature glide of the heat source and sink best possibly. Therefore, a set of six common working fluids is defined and the possible binary mixtures of these fluids are analyzed.

The performance of the fluids is evaluated based on the energetic performance (COP) and the economic potential (NPV). The results show that the utilization of mixtures allows a heat pump application to preheat the drying air to 120 °C with a COP of 3.04 and a NPV of 0.997 Mio. €, which could reduce the natural gas consumption by 36 %.