A survey on performance of heat pumps present on the Italian market

In this paper the performances of heat pumps are investigated. This analysis regards the calculation of coefficients of performance (COP) for several heat pumps available on the Italian market. Specification sheets of various heat pumps manufacturers declare performance values based on different reference (nominal) conditions. As a consequence, for the designer it is difficult to determine the heat pump that best fits each specific application. Even more, incentives aimed at heat pump spreading may require minimum performances levels rated at boundary conditions out of catalogue data. In the first part of the study several technical data have been collected from different suppliers and a subdivision of different types of machines has been carried out and comparisons between the products have been performed. In order to calculate the performance of machines at the same boundary conditions, a FORTRAN code developed by the authors has been used.