Heat Pumps

Source: eDecisions | · LINKEDIN · | May 19, 2024

A heat pump leverages the heat/cool in an external heat source. External heat sources can be air, water and ground.

Regardless of the heat source, the source will provide heat for an evaporator to gasify a refrigerant. A compressor will then send the gas to a condenser where it cools and condenses back to a liquid releasing the heat energy. A heat exchanger captures this heat and sends it to the facility.

A heat pump can work in reverse, using the external heat source to provide cooling for the facility.

Heat pumps essentially translate electricity into heat.  Simple baseboard heaters have a “coefficient of performance (COP)” of one. This means that for one unit of input electricity energy, we get one unit of output thermal energy.

Heat pumps improve the COP depending on the temperature of the heat source as shown in the COP performance curve. As the temperature of the heat source increase, so does the COP performance for heating. For example, if the heat source is -30C, then the COP is close to 1.  If the heat source is 20C, then the COP is 5.