New climate-control units for more energy-efficient electric vehicles: system architecture

The paper presents the architecture of a new climate-control system that is under development in the XERIC project, funded within the Horizon 2020 EU program, that aims to increase Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) autonomy by reducing more than 50% the energy used all over the year for passenger comfort in all weather conditions. The system combines a traditional Vapor Compression Cycle (VCC) with a liquid desiccant cycle (LDC), by taking advantage of an innovative component, called Three-Fluids Combined Membrane Contactor (3F-CMC). The approaches that can be adopted by the XERIC system to face the different seasonal needs are shown and commented. Moreover, numerical models developed in the Matlab/Simulink environment and used to predict the system performance are presented. Finally, first results regarding the experimental campaign performed to link the VCC and the LDC are discussed.