Experimental Study on the Heating Performance Improvement of R134a Heat Pump System for Zero Emission Vehicles

This paper describes an experimental study for heating performance that can be used in R-134a automobile heat pump systems. The heat pump system is widely studied for heating system in zero-emission vehicles to attain both the small power consumption and the effective heating of the cabin. This paper presents the experimental results of the influence on heating capacity and coefficient of performance of heat pump system. Tests were performed with different sizes of internal and external heat exchangers, and refrigerant flow rate was also considered in two-way flow devices. In addition, the heat, air, and water sources with the heat pump system were examined. The experimental results with the heat pump system were used to analyze the impact on performances. The best combination of performance was A-inside heat exchanger, B-outside heat exchanger, and B-flow device, respectively. In addition, a water heat-source was found to give roughly 40% of better performance than an air heat-source heat pump system.