A novel dual hot gas bypass defrosting (DHBD) method is developed to remove frost from the outside heat exchanger (HEX) of an air-to-air heat pump. The proposed method adopts two bypass lines of hot gas from the compressor: one is connected to the inlet of the outdoor HEX, and the other is connected to the outlet of the exchanger. We compare the dynamic performance and defrosting time of the conventional reverse cycle defrosting (RCD), hot gas bypass cycle defrosting (HGBD), and DHBD methods using a medium air-to-air 16 kW heat pump. The salient feature of the DHBD method is its ability to prevent a sharp decrease in the compressor outlet temperature at the melting frost stage after the HGBD process begins. Due to the additional bypass, the DHBD method sustained a higher compressor outlet pressure and reduced the defrosting time by 36% compared to the HGBD method. Compared to RCD, the defrosting time was comparable (126%); however, the amenity characteristics of the DHBD method were superior than those of the RCD method. The proposed DHBD method can overcome the main disadvantages of the RCD and HGBD methods, and showed excellent performance for an air-to-air heat pump in a defrosting operation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.