The Future of Refrigerants for Heat Pump Applications
Heat pumps are a key technology to accelerate the defossilization of all sectors. Especially in residential applications, heat pumps serve as exchange technology for conventional heating technologies. The operation of heat pumps requires a refrigerant that significantly determines the system's efficiency. However, the refrigerant choice is complex due to interactions with all components and nonlinear thermodynamic behavior. Therefore, refrigerant selection is widely discussed in the literature. This work introduces the refrigerant selection problem and applies a simple screening method to identify proper refrigerants in residential heat pumps. The application reveals future work to improve the refrigerant selection aiming for the optimal refrigerant in heat pumps concerning their application.