Effect of refrigerant leakages on energy consumption of an electric heat pump for domestic air conditioning

摘要

Refrigerant leakages in stationary air-conditioning and heat pumps represent almost the 50% of the amount ofF-gas emissions declared by European Commission. Reducing leakages becomes crucially important becausethey cause both a high environmental impact and a decline of system performances. Typically, small leakagesremain unidentified for a long period of time, causing a considerable long-term performance degradation ofthe machine. This paper deals with a mechanistic approach to simulate an air-to-air heat pump for domestic airconditioning, in different refrigerant loss rate scenarios, to evaluate the corresponding degradation of itsseasonal performances. Results shows an average of 10% improvement of seasonal performances of themachine, with the employment of tools for fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) able to detect a refrigerantleakage through data collected by sensor mounted on the machine. Furthermore a 11% reduction of indirectcontribute to global warming impact is achieved for small refrigerant leakages, whereas for larger leakages thedirect emissions of CO2 become 65% lower.