Refrigerant Charge in Heat Pumps - Part I - Charge Inventory Analysis and the advent of charge reduction

This article, the first of two, gives an overview on past and current activities to analyse and reduce refrigerant charge in heat pumps. It focusses on the increasing awareness on effects of charge variations and how charge reduction activities have started. In the second half of the article a short survey on commonly applied experimental techniques to investigate charge inventory and a review on some current activities for charge distribution are presented. Part 2 is planned for the next issue of the HPC Newsletter