Hydrocarbons are today considered as promising alternative substances because of their low environmental impact and their easy implementation in heat pumps. The heat pumping technology is similar to that of HFCs. However, some precautions have to be taken to thwart their flammability. European regulations impose stringent certifications (ATEX, Atmospheres Explosives) on components and an installation outside the buildings for devices having the refrigerant charge of small heat pumps for space heating. In the frame of a research project on heat pumps for simultaneous heating and cooling (HPS), an R407C prototype of air-source HPS was built and tested. A second prototype is today being designed for propane. A simple and thermodynamically realistic model was developed using EES software. It is an adaptation of an R407C model validated with experimental data. The development of this scroll compressor model working with R407C and its adaptation to thermodynamic properties of propane is presented in this article. A comparison is finally carried out between R407C and R290 scroll compressor models.
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