Recently, Dr. Na Deng in School of Environmental Science and Technology published original research article “Molecular simulation and experimental investigation for thermodynamic properties of new refrigerant NBY-1 for high temperature heat pump” in Energy Conversion and Management (2019, 179, P339-348)(IF: 5.589). This paper is aiming to develop high temperature heat pump technology and the corresponding refrigerant. It presents the differences in thermodynamic properties of refrigerants in different spatial conformation, showing the superiority of molecular simulation in predicting thermodynamic properties of fluids. And molecular simulation was modified to improve prediction accuracy of thermodynamic properties of fluids at high temperature and pressure. Meanwhile, a new high temperature heat pump refrigerant mixture named NBY-1 was proposed, and its thermodynamic properties were estimated with the modified molecular simulation. Then the experiment investigation was carried out and showed the good cycle performance of NBY-1 as the refrigerant. Due to the novel idea and breakthrough, peer review has highly valuated this paper. “In my opinion, it seems that the practical novelty of this paper is sufficient and the manuscript contained sufficient contributions to the new body of knowledge!”

 

Project support: Tianjin Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.16JCYBJC20500) and the 973 National Basic Research Program of China(Grant No.2015CB251403).

 

Authors introduce: The Corresponding author Dr. Na Deng is an associate professor of Tianjin University and a member of engineering research center of energy allocation and conversion of Tianjin University. While the co-author Yufeng Zhang is the leader of the research center. And other co-authors are Xiaoyu Jing, Rongchang Cai, Jian Gao, Changyu Shen, HongSui. 

 

Keyword: Molecular simulation; Thermodynamic properties prediction; High-temperature refrigerant 

 

(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2018.10.076)

 

 

Fig. 1. Molecular simulation: obtain molecular properties based on the level of molecular information.

 

 

Fig. 2. The modified molecular simulation was used to predict Vapor-liquid equilibrium for the new high temperature heat pump refrigerant NBY-1 at high temperature. 

 

 

Fig. 3. High temperature heat pump using NBY-1 could supply high temperature water of 130？°C with the highest coefficient of performance of 2.74, for the single stage compression heat pump system.

 

By: Na Deng, School of Environmental Science and Technology

Editors: Qin Mian and Keith Harrington