b'Engineer Innovation | ManufacturingLowering Development Costs at SANDEN ManufacturingHeat pump manufacturer uses Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to rapidly explore design space and bring products to market faster Old challenges, new solution Adrien Rochelle, an advancedheaters. Additionally, COis an eco-2Gaining market share in an established,development engineer at SME,friendly, natural refrigerantcompetitive marketlike the one forsummarized their experience: Thecompared to the fluorinated gases domestic hot water heatersis alwaysautomated and integrated design(F-gases) more commonly used in heat a challenge, even when youreexploration approach with Simcenter pumps, COhas no ozone depleting 2introducing customers to higher- STAR-CCM+ saved us a significantpotential (ODP), has very low global performing, environmentally-friendlyamount of time and expense. Withoutwarming potential (GWP), and is non-product options. This challenge furtherit, we could not have achieved this levelflammable and non-toxic. amplifies the need to reduce the timeof performance improvements. Consequently, CO -based heat pumps 2and costs involved in the design andare an ideal match for use in the new development of new products. InSimulationthe key to reducingwave of buildings being designed with cooperation with advanceddevelopment time and cost low energy consumption in mind, as development engineers, the thermalSANDEN Japan pioneered thethey comply with the latest regulatory engineers at SANDEN Manufacturingdevelopment of heat pumps forrequirements for high energy Europe (SME) met this challenge byresidential sanitary water heating,efficiency and use of renewables.relying on computational fluidusing COas the refrigerant fluid, in 2dynamics (CFD) simulations to design aresponse to the ever-present demandThe basic components of a CO -based 2key component of an innovative heatfor better performance and greaterheat pump are illustrated in Figure 1. An pump that uses carbon dioxide (R744)energy efficiency. These CO -basedintegrated pump draws cold water from 2as the working fluid. They usedheat pumps have emerged as anthe bottom of the water tank; the Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to perform theattractive option due to their superiorheating of the water occurs as it flows simulations, resulting in savings ofperformance and energy efficiencythrough the gas cooler, which is a heat 31,000 and 36 weeksthe cost andcompared to traditional electric waterexchanger (coaxial countercurrent time required to build and test two physical prototypes, which were rendered unnecessary by the simulations. Additionally, the SANDEN engineers performed fully automated CFD-based design explorationsusing Design Manager, a multidisciplinary design exploration tool that is part of Simcenter STAR-CCM+ to determine the optimum shape of the passageways that direct air through the heat pumps evaporator to maximize the heat transfer that occurs there. Running Design Manager for six days on 24 CPU cores, the SANDEN engineers explored a much broader range of design possibilities, resulting in a configuration that was not only delivered in less time and cost, but which also significantly outperformed previous designs developed using conventional, manual approaches (including a 60% improvement in the air recirculation ratioa key performance metric in determining the heat transfer occurring in the evaporator).Figure 1: Schematic of a CO 2 -based air/water heat pump.40'