Within the Heat Pump Programme (HPP) of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Annex 34 “Thermally Driven Heat Pumps for Heating and Cooling” has been started last year. As outlined in the letter of intentions of the Annex, “the main goal of this annex is to reduce the environmental impact of heating and cooling by the use of thermally driven heat pumps”.

Taking as a base the results of the finished Annex 24 and cooperating with the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Program Task 38 “Solar Air Conditioning and Refrigeration” the economical quantification, the environmental implications and energy performance of integrated thermally driven heat pumps in cooling and heating systems in a range of climates, countries and applications are going to be studied. The applications are mainly focused on the use of the heat pumps in domestic and small commercial buildings, although some industrial applications will be taken into account.

• Larger DHWS-systems with cooling

• Small Heat Pumps for domestic heating and cooling

• Small Abs/Ads Chillers on heat form

• Small Abs/Ads Chillers on solar heat

• Industrial processes using waste heat

As can be seen in the figure 1 [2] or in the obtained results of the ECOHEATCOOL Project [3,4], heating needs in Europe are usually more important than cooling needs. Therfore, reducing the primary energy amount with a more efficient machine during the months when heating is needed, is a good scenario for the development of new applications for thermally driven heat pumps that would have potential for saving primary energy (fossil fuel) and reducing its adverse impact of classical fuels on global warming and environmental pollution. (i. e.: as heat source renewable energies as solar energy, waste heat, process heat or district heating could be used [5])

In [6] a comparison of the energy demand for heating and cooling for single house sited in the middle of Spain, a place where cooling is needed during the summer season, is exposed. Although this example is placed in one of the hottest zones of Europe, the heating demand is considerably higher than the cooling one — and the example therefore emphasises the importance of savings in heating for nearly all climates in Europe.

Obtained results will help in the identification of the applications that are suitable of being optimized from the economical and environmental point of view, as well as the most promising countries, markets, barriers — and solutions to eliminate the latter — in order to help launching the technology in all possible climates.

2. Structure of the project

More than fourteen research and development groups and producers from nowadays 6 different countries (Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and USA) are joining efforts to develop this project. It is divided in 5 different tasks as is shown in the figure 2.

Fraunhofer ISE (Germany) has the responsibility of leading the Annex, helped by the leaders of each one of the Tasks.

Respectively, the responsibles are:

• ECN (Netherlands)

• Arsenal Research (Austria)

• CNR Messina (Italy)

• Eurac Research (Italy)

• TU Berlin (Germany)