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Performance of a conventional residential-sized heat pump operating with a nonazeotropic binary refrigerant mixture

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6611648
The report presents laboratory-performance measurements of a relatively unmodified residential heat pump designed for R22 when charged with a nonazeotropic, binary mixture of R13B1 and R152a. Results are presented for various sizes of fixed-expansion devices. The effect of gliding temperature within the saturation zone was found to be small. The experimental investigation confirmed that flash distillation within the accumulator would improve low-temperature heating performance. The measured performance was approximately 11% lower in both efficiency and capacity than R22 for air conditioning. The high-temperature heating efficiency was 3% lower than R22. The low-temperature heating capacity was 14% higher and efficiency 2% higher than R22. These results show a substantial improvement over R22 for heating applications at the expense of reduced cooling-mode performance. Further performance enhancement for this or other mixtures is expected through various system modifications that remain to be studied.
Research Organization:
National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC (USA). Building Equipment Div.
OSTI ID:
6611648
Report Number(s):
PB-87-152286/XAB; NBSIR-86/3422
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English