Review and prospect of air source heat pump research: A bibliometric insight

Abstract

Heat pump is an energy-saving device that can absorb heat from the surrounding environment for heating. Air source heat pump (ASHP) is a kind of heat pump with air as the low-temperature heat source. The characteristics of air are inexhaustible and not limited by geographical conditions. Compared with other heat pumps, it has obvious advantages and broad development prospects. Although there are many review articles related to ASHP, most of them focus on a single topic in this field, and few studies pay attention to the research of ASHP from the perspective of bibliometrics or scientometrics analysis. Therefore, using bibliometrics and scientific mapping methods, this paper analyzes 1247 articles retrieved from the Web of Science core collection during 1985–2022 with ASHP as the topic. The results show that the number of publications issued by ASHP during the study period increased exponentially, and the related research areas became more and more diversified. The main research forces in the field are distributed in China, Italy, South Korea, USA and England as well as most of the top research institutions are concentrated in China. The article also introduces the policies related to the development of ASHP in China. Based on the four-fold philosophical framework and the research characteristics of ASHP, the research topics were re-divided into 8 categories. Through the analysis of keyword clustering and “Usage Counts” indicator, it is found that ASHP space heating, ASHP multi-energy complementary system and the combination of heat storage technology and ASHP are continuous research hotspots in this field. It is hoped that this paper can provide ideas for researchers to better grasp the research status and future direction of ASHP.