Conference Year
2018
Keywords
Performance, Heat Pumps, On-Field
Abstract
Thanks to their high theoretical efficiency, residential heat pumps (HP) are a promising technology when attempting to reduce the energy consumption of heating in dwellings. Evaluation of their real performances on-field is thus crucial to promote their development and deployment. However, measuring accurately real heating capacity of air-to-air HP is not easy, since measuring air enthalpy and mass flow rate is challenging. A previously developed non-intrusive internal method based on the compressor energy balance has been improved. It can calculate the coefficient of performance (COP) of different HP types, including air-to-air, on field, thanks to real-time measurements, without interfering with normal operation of the system, and without technical data of the specific heat pump. In this study, a complete validation of this method has been led on a test bench, using an air-to-water HP in order to compare the results of the method with the water-side measurements. This internal refrigerant method was tested for various climatic conditions and heating needs, in stationary and dynamic conditions, including starting and defrosting phases. Different faults were simulated to analyse the behaviour of the method in these conditions, including refrigerant undercharging and exchanger fouling. The analysis also extends to identifying which parameters need to be observed to early detect these faults. The method proves to be robust and its uncertainty to remain low, although it varies with the different working phases. The precise knowledge of real-time performances obtained with this method can help to assess the performance impact of faults and thus to improve associated fault detection and diagnostic methods. On a longer-term scale, the comparison of measured field performances and performances obtained via simplified models, such as regulatory models for instance, could give interesting indications to improve these models.