Dynamic model of a heat pump based house heating system

Abstract

Heat pumps have gained a huge popularity as an efficient indoor heating system including several other applications due to relatively low installation cost and energy consumption, and high potential mitigation of global warming than conventional heating systems. The present work aims to develop a modeling tool to investigate dynamic behavior of heat pumps for heating applications. A vapor-compression, air-source HP house heating system with a zeotropic refrigerant R-407c is developed using MATLAB R (cid:13) based Simscape TM language. The system components such as the evaporator, compressor, condenser, expansion valve, house and the controller are modeled using a combination of Simscape TM foundation libraries. Each component model has a set of tunable parameters that can be adjusted by user preferences in order to simulate the real-time operation. The dynamics of the system and its response to variable ambient temperature is investigated and discussed. The model depicts the expected behaviour under the simulated operating conditions and is capable of maintaining a comfortable user defined heating temperature inside the house. The model developed will be used to gain insight into performance characteristics of heat pump systems used for local production in the district heating.