Energy efficient control of a heat pump in fully electric vehicle

Abstract

Since fully electric vehicles (FEV) do not have enough waste heat for cabin heating as internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and hybrid vehicles do, it is beneficial to employ a reversible heat pump in FEVs. The reversible heat pump can be used for both the cabin cooling and heating and especially under winter conditions it is able to substantially improve the FEV driving range compared to heating with PTC heater. This paper is focused on energy efficient control for the reversible heat pumps using either R1234yf or R744 refrigerant. The main goal of these control algorithms is to achieve a satisfactory passenger thermal comfort with as low as possible energy consumption.Since fully electric vehicles (FEV) do not have enough waste heat for cabin heating as internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and hybrid vehicles do, it is beneficial to employ a reversible heat pump in FEVs. The reversible heat pump can be used for both the cabin cooling and heating and especially under winter conditions it is able to substantially improve the FEV driving range compared to heating with PTC heater. This paper is focused on energy efficient control for the reversible heat pumps using either R1234yf or R744 refrigerant. The main goal of these control algorithms is to achieve a satisfactory passenger thermal comfort with as low as possible energy consumption.