Performance Improvement Technology on a Continuous Heating Heat Pump at Frost Condition

Heat pumps come into wide use because high energy efficiency can be obtained and diverse heat sources like geothermal heat, waste heat and air are available. It is necessary for an air source heat pump to defrost in order to remove frost on the surfaces of an outdoor heat exchanger. It is impossible for continuous heating if reverse cycle operation is used as defrosting method, furthermore it causes the degradation of COP. In this study an fin-tube heat exchanger with three rows was used as an outdoor coil. One row among three rows of the heat exchanger was used like a condenser in order to remove frost on it, the others were used as evaporator to accomplish continuous heating. Each row was switched in order from a condenser to an evaporator in specified time interval. Tests were carried out during minimum 180 minutes at the defrost-heating test condition(dry bulb temperature 2℃, wet bulb temperature 1℃) described in KS C 9306. Time-averaged COP was about 20% higher than that of conventional defrosting method.