Research about refrigerant charge in domestic heat pumps

Resumo

Due to the climate crisis, there is a need to find alternative energy sources for space heating, cooling, and domestic hot water (DHW) production. Heat pumps are an excellent alternative to substitute current boilers to reduce gas emissions. A liquid source heat pump is highly recommended in new buildings with access to land or water due to its significant advantages. The main problem with this technology is that it uses a refrigerant inside, and there is no refrigerant with good performance, cheap and safe to handle. The near future trend in heat pumps used for space heating is to use pure refrigerants such as natural refrigerants and HFOs. These refrigerants (except CO2) have safety issues (flammability or toxicity); consequently, a maximum amount of refrigerant is allowed without considering extra safety measures. This PhD presents an experimental work with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) with a low R290 refrigerant amount. This experimental campaign is helpful to know the current achievable performance derived from the limitation of refrigerant amount, to develop refrigerant charge reduction strategies and to improve existing simulation software based on refrigerant charge prediction. The experimental campaign was divided into two parts to focus separately on normal annual behaviour and refrigerant charge reduction strategies. In each test campaign, performance data was recorded during the test, and the refrigerant charge amount in each component was extracted and weighed after the end of each test. The installation had the tools to acquire data from the vapour compression circuit, isolate the components, and extract and weigh the refrigerant to know how much refrigerant was inside each section. With the data collected, it was observed that the differences in refrigerant charge prediction in the components with the software used were significant, and some causes of these differences have been identified, correcting the prediction model. So, a compressor model has been developed, and a dead volume has been added to the refrigerant charge calculation in heat exchangers. With these changes, the refrigerant prediction has greatly improved in the model used and could be a reliable approximation.