AIR CONDITIONING
Pump action
Heating and cooling accounts for nearly half of UK energy consumption and a third of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Anything that can be done to reduce these figures must be welcomed. Tim Mitchell, sales director of Klima-Therm, offers an attractive solution.
H
eat pumps are far from new. Mathematical physicist and engineer Lord Kelvin anticipated the theoretical
physics surrounding this impressive technology almost 170 years ago. The first practical heat pump was developed between 1855 and 1857 by engineer and mineral processing pioneer Peter von Rittinger to heat salt works in the village of Ebensee in Upper Austria.
The following decades saw a host of water
and ground source heat pump developments including the construction of a closed loop heat pump to heat Geneva’s city hall in 1928 and the installation of an experimental water source heat pump feeding a central heating system in Norwich in 1945. In 1951, the first large scale heat pump installation was carried out in London’s Royal Festival Hall. This incorporated a gas-powered reversible water-source heat pump fed by the
Thames for both winter heating and summer cooling needs.
Nowadays, the case for heat pumps is compelling; just look at the figures: The global heat pump industry generated US $55.2 billion in 2018 and is estimated to reach $99.6bn by 2026, according to Allied Market Research The company explains: “Some of the factors that drive the growth of the heat pump market include replacement of conventional fuel-based heating method by heat pump technology and significant adoption of heat pump technology in residential applications as a cost-effective heating method. Besides this, heat pump technology contributes substantially to the reduction of CO2
emission and also complies with
regulatory norms.” Little wonder that heat pumps are growing in popularity. They appear to defy the laws of physics by delivering efficiencies of over 100% (in other words, delivering more heat energy than the energy they consume). So, in a typical HVAC heating application, for each kW of electricity consumed by a heat pump, around 4kW of thermal energy is generated, corresponding to a 300% efficiency or a coefficient of performance (CoP) of 4.0. In fact, heat pumps don’t create heat; they merely convey, convert and upgrade existing heat from the air, water or ground. The latest cutting-edge technology, however, goes a step further by offering even higher efficiencies and producing simultaneous or independent cooling and heating (using heat recovery wherever possible for ‘free’ heating or cooling). Using heat pumps for heating involves collecting low grade heat from the air, water (for example, lakes or rivers) or from the ground. This heat is then upgraded by using a refrigerant
30 September 2020
www.acr-news.com
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