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Refrigerant charge study for R454C as a replacement for R410A in a residential heat pump split system.

Number: 0003

Author(s) : HOU W., FARD H. R., BURNS L., GROLL E. A., BRAUN J. E., ZIVIANI D.

Summary

The transition to low-GWP working fluids for residential heat pump applications necessitates extensive experimental investigations of drop-in replacements to inform the design of next generation of equipment. To this end, a fully instrumented residential heat pump split system has been tested under a wide range of conditions with both R410A and its replacement R454C. Experimental results showed a large difference in refrigerant charge requirements between heating and cooling mode during the testing with R454C. This charge imbalance is likely due to inappropriate sizing of the heat exchangers for this high-glide zeotropic mixture. In this work, a detailed steady-state model of the heat pump system has been developed and validated using experimental data including refrigerant inventory. The model included a dimensionless compressor model, discretized heat exchanger models with high-glide zeotropic mixture corrections, a semi-empirical electrical expansion device model as well as lineset models. A two-point tuning method was applied to account for inaccurate charge estimation for the working fluids. The discretized models were employed to identify the charge distribution inside of the R454C system when operating in cooling and heating modes. Based on the results, the heat exchangers were redesigned to reduce the
charge imbalance between cooling and heating modes. The simulation results show that the improved heat pump design could reduce the difference in required charge for cooling and heating modes from 2.28 kg to 0.87 kg, which effectively solved the charge imbalance issue. Additionally, the modified heat pump system could increase cooling and heating capacity by 16.1% and 6.7%, respectively.

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Pages: 9 p.

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Details

  • Original title: Refrigerant charge study for R454C as a replacement for R410A in a residential heat pump split system.
  • Record ID : 30031013
  • Languages: English
  • Subject: HFCs alternatives
  • Source: 3rd IIR conference on HFO Refrigerants and low GWP Blends. Shanghai, China.
  • Publication date: 2023/04/05
  • DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18462/iir.HFO2023.0003

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