Sterilization is of great importance to prevent the spread and resurgence of the
COVID-19, yet sterilization methods are all energy intensive in general.
Steam sterilization is easily maintained and can be applied in various scenarios with less residual pollution. However, the current
steam generator (so called boiler) has brought many energy and environmental concerns. With the investigation on
steam sterilization's features, this study proposed a clean and flexible
steam generation system with the air source heat pump and
water vapor compressor, and the system can be further simplified through the combination with district heating pipeline. The critical design parameters and simulated performance of the system are evaluated and optimized through a MATLAB simulation, and a prototype was built with experimental performance assessing. The results show the system has an average boiler efficiency of over 170% when the ambient temperature varies from 5 °C to 35 °C and the temperature of outlet
steam is above 110 °C, and has the best economic performance when the operating period is above 3 years. Furthermore, the air-source heat pump boiler system is proved to effectively respond to the surging sterilization demands during the peaks of the
COVID-19 pandemic and is well consistent with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.