Solution regeneration plays an important role in maintaining the frost-free operation of heating tower heat pump (HTHP). The traditional packed regenerator has limitation on thermal energy utilization due to its low regeneration efficiency. This paper suggests a novel HTHP system with integrated air gap membrane distillation regenerator (AGMD), using the sensible heat of high-temperature refrigerant gas at the compressor discharge to drive the regeneration process, realizing the cascade utilization of thermal energy and reducing the deterioration of COP (DCOP). Thermodynamic model of the novel system is developed and model simulations are carried out to study the system performance, meanwhile the comparison between the proposed system and conventional reverse-defrosting air source heat pump (ASHP) is performed. The results show that the DCOP of the novel system decreases from 4.4% to 2.6% as the evaporating temperature decreases from −15 °C to −25 °C under typical working condition. Decrease of evaporating temperature and increase of condensing temperature will greatly enhance the regeneration efficiency and reduce DCOP. The influence of solution concentration on DCOP is also distinct, which becomes greater as the water removal rate increases. The maximum coefficient of separation performance (COSP) increases from 0.0042 to 0.0052 kg/kJ as the ambient temperature decreases from 0 °C to −20 °C, while it decreases from 0.0031 kg/kJ to 0.0016 kg/kJ with a dramatic decline of 48% for the traditional reverse-defrosting ASHP, indicating that the novel system performs better than the traditional one and is more suitable to find applications at low ambient temperature conditions.

溶液再生在维持加热塔热泵（HTHP）的无霜运行中起着重要作用。传统的填充式再生器由于其低再生效率而限制了热能的利用。本文提出了一种新型的带有集成气隙膜蒸馏再生器（AGMD）的HTHP系统，该系统利用压缩机出口处的高温制冷剂气体的显热量驱动再生过程，实现热能的级联利用，并减少了高温气化。缔约方会议（DCOP）。建立了新系统的热力学模型，并进行了模型仿真，研究了系统的性能，同时对所提出的系统与传统的反霜空气源热泵（ASHP）进行了比较。结果表明，在典型工作条件下，随着蒸发温度从-15°C下降到-25°C，新型系统的DCOP从4.4％下降到2.6％。蒸发温度的降低和冷凝温度的升高将大大提高再生效率并降低DCOP。溶液浓度对DCOP的影响也很明显，随着脱水率的增加，浓度会越来越大。当环境温度从0°C降低到-20°C时，最大分离性能（COSP）从0.0042增至0.0052 kg / kJ，而从0.0031 kg / kJ降低至0.0016 kg / kJ，且急剧下降。传统逆向除霜ASHP的48％，