ANALYSIS OF THERMALLY CONNECTED RESIDENTIAL APPLIANCES

With the United States being the world’s second largest consumer of primary energy, research into areas of significant consumption can provide large impacts in terms of the global energy consumption. Buildings account for 41% of U.S. total energy consumption with the residential sector making up a majority. Household appliances account for the second largest site energy consumption at 27%, after the HVAC system for the U.S. residential sector. Federal appliance standards have been instrumental in improving efficiencies but have been increasing aggressively to where it is unknown what suitable technologies can support this rate of increase. Thermally integrating residential appliances by leveraging waste heat recovery goes outside standards and has not been adequately explored by connecting all residential appliances. Limited studies exist focused only on single appliances connected to waste heat recovery or being thermally integrated. Preliminary modeling on waste heat availability from five major appliances, namely refrigerator-freezer, clothes dryer, clothes washer, dishwasher, and cooking oven was conducted. Conservative estimates predict the total amount of heat recovery to be around 2,000 kWh/year; clothes dryer - 137 kWh/year, clothes washer - 60 kWh/year, 1,500 kWh/year- refrigerator-freezer, 27 kWh/year – dishwasher, and 178 kWh/year – cooking oven. The cooking oven presents technical challenges coupled with safety concerns. The clothes dryer and refrigerator-freezer can deliver useful water temperatures and reduce compressor power consumption, up to 20%. The dishwasher has better opportunity as a heat sink to offset the internal heater, 0.17 kWh of electricity/cycle for heating wash water. The clothes washer drains large volumes of water available for heat recovery and can offset the impact of using high temperature washes with improved wash performance.

Modelica appliance models have been developed for four of these five appliances. The Modelica models capture individual use and the predictions of the RF and DW were compared against available experimental data. The individual models have been connected to a simple storage tank model to simulate the integrated appliance system. An integrated appliance prototype was designed and fabricated for the collection of experimental data. Comparisons made between the experimental data and the integrated appliance simulation results adjusted the modeling approach and improved agreement with collected data. After tuning, ideal modifications to each appliance are made and reflected in a new integrated model. A parametric study is conducted on ideal improved, thermally capable appliances under a 1-week schedule for two different tank sizes. For 300L and 150 L tank sizes, the appliance total energy for the week is roughly 30.5 kWh compared to a baseline appliance system with no thermal resource sharing at 33.8 kWh. At an electricity cost of $0.15/kWh, the cost savings for the integrated system is a little over $0.40/week. Furthermore, the savings is completely diminished when considering the required auxiliary power to support the exchange of heat between each appliance and storage tank. The impact of tank size should be explored further to identify a critical tank size where the system savings is no longer available. Accounting for all the domestic hot water needs of the home would generate an improved picture where integrated appliances have technical feasibility.