Probleemstelling:

A heat pump represents a system of different components that is able to transfer heat from a low-temperature energy source to a high-temperature energy sink. For doing so, the heat pump unit is using an external power supply as well as a specific type of working medium. In the residential heating system application, air to water heat pumps are the most commonly used type. For accurate energy performance assessment methods application and appropriate sizing of the unit, reliable and easy parameterized models of the heat pumps system are necessary.

Doelstelling:

The work is generally divided into two main parts: a numerical and an experimental part.

In the numerical part, the performance of different available dynamic models to evaluate the different components and the general model configuration of an air to water heat pump system for residential use need to be assessed. A thorough study of the influence of different model parameters on the simulation models will be done. The dynamic models will be created in the software environment DyMola (Modelica), with the optional use of MatLab or Python. Several open-source and one commercially available modelling library will be used to model the unit and the working conditions.
The experimental part of the work consists of utilizing the experimental data from measurements done on an existing air-to-water heat pump unit in order to validate different modelling results. These results can be used to select the best modelling approach and possibly further extend the benefits of the existing models.