Refrigerant Lab 4.0: Integrated Optimization of Heat Pump Systems from Theory to Accessible Practice [30]

Heat pump systems are the key technology towards the transformation to a sustainable building supply. While heating buildings with conventional technologies such as gas boilers is relatively easy to accomplish through high flow temperatures, heat pump systems are much more sensitive to changes in temperature demands and heat loads. Simultaneously, heat pump systems may be used in combination with PV, batteries or solar thermal systems for a sustainable operation. In this context, system level alignments (optimal design and optimal operation) play a decisive role in the performance of the entire building energy system. To soundly exploit the entire potential of building energy systems using heat pumps, research in dynamic simulation models and experiments is necessary. In order to take into account the integrated effects of design, operation and system interactions, simplifying assumptions often have to be made. Therefore, results of such studies may misestimate the actual potential of heat pump systems. Experiments are therefore essential to validate theoretical findings. The Refrigerant Lab 4.0 is an innovative research infrastructure for the optimization of heat pump systems in theory and practice. To accelerate research and aiming at closed-loop investigations, the laboratory is designed as a living lab for participation of stakeholder, supporting interactions during the research process. In addition to an innovative, highly interconnected infrastructure, this setup requires simulation and optimization models specially adapted to the laboratory in order to maximize the knowledge gain. In this presentation, we introduce the Refrigerant Lab 4.0 with promising investigation opportunities and current limitations. From this, we can derive requirements for future laboratory setups that allow the efficient coupling of experiment, optimization and simulation focusing on the exchange with external stakeholders for example via Virtual Reality. This coupling yields the acceleration of the efficient exploitation of the entire potential of heat pump systems for faster transformation process towards sustainable building supply.