A metrological analysis of the in-situ evaluation of the performance of a gas engine-driven heat pump

When evaluating the performance of a gas heat pump (GHP), in addition to tests at set points in an environmental chamber, field tests are often useful to verify also the GHP behaviour at real running conditions. Indeed, GHP comfort, maintainability, serviceability and installation procedure information is also obtained by means of an in-situ evaluation of its performance. In this work attention is paid firstly to the definition of the GHP performance parameters and to the consequent quantities to be measured and monitored. Therefore, this paper contains a short survey of measurement sensors suitable and convenient for an in-situ evaluation of GHP performance as well as the related metrological analysis (overall uncertainty evaluation). The present paper is only the first part of a wider study carried out by the authors. The experimental results of the in-situ performance evaluation of a small-size GHP will be presented in further publications.