Influence of the expansion device on the performance of a heat pump using R407C under a range of charging conditions

The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the expansion device on the performance of a water-to-water heat pump using R407C, which has been considered as one of the alternative refrigerants to replace R22 with “soft-optimization”, at various charging conditions. The heat pump applying the expansion devices of a capillary tube and an EEV was tested by varying refrigerant charge amount from −20% to +20% of full charge and changing water temperature entering the condenser from 30 °C to 42 °C, while maintaining water temperature entering the evaporator at 25 °C. The R22 capillary tube system is utilized as a baseline unit for the performance comparison with the R407C system. The performance of the capillary tube system is more sensitive to off-design charge than that of the EEV system. As the refrigerant charge deviates from the full charge, the R407C EEV system shows a much lower degradation of capacity and COP as compared to the R22 and R407C capillary tube systems due to an optimum control of superheat by electronically adjusting the EEV opening. In addition, the R407C EEV system shows more a stable compressor discharge temperature at off-design charge than the R407C capillary tube system.