Paper No 160 – Acoustic Characterisation of an Air-To-Water Heat Pump for Different Operating Conditions: Inter-laboratory Results – 13th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Jeju, Korea
Since the last 5 years the European heat pump market is showing an accelerated growth of outdoor air source heat pumps. The noise emitted by heat pumps is recognised as a drawback of the technology, especially during non-steady state operation of the heat pump. Within Annex 51 "Acoustic Signatures of Heat Pumps" of the IEA HPT TCP, a dedicated task is the experimental investigations on acoustic performance of air-to-water heat pumps. The measurements of several laboratories on a unit, according to several operating conditions, on standard conditions (EN 14511), part-load conditions (EN 14825) and ERP (EN 12102-1) are compared. Under some conditions, some frost/defrost cycles occur, and a focus is set on the spectrum and sound level changes that can be observed between these cycles. The paper also presents some data about the acoustic directivity of the unit.