Consequences and prospects due to the broad use of R-290 in Heat Pumps in Germany

R-290 in particular has become one of the standard refrigerants in detached and semi-detached houses alongside R-410A and R-32. Currently, more than 50 market players already offer Heat Pumps with R-290.
It will be shown how the selection of the refrigerant affects Heat Pump efficiencies of individual systems by the large-scale analysis of product data but also their influence on the overall efficiency on annually installed Heat Pumps by analysing the share of R-290 Heat Pumps being subsidized within the German BEG EM Heat Pump funding and their efficiencies.
The continuation of this development on the demand side depends to a large extent largely on the development of further fields of application in which R-290 Heat Pumps are available as products. These are mainly applications installed indoors. In order to be able to continue this development smoothly in the coming years, systems with suitable safety concepts are required that enable operation indoors and thus, for example, their use in multi-storey residential buildings.
To this end, design and investigation approaches for safety-related features of Heat Pumps and results are presented that have already been in use for some time or are currently being discussed and investigated as part of projects.
This comprises approaches for reducing the filling quantity refrigerant charge, for leakage detection and for the investigation of released refrigerant within a Heat Pump system as well as the interaction of a Heat Pump installation with the installation room and adjacent areas/rooms.