I don’t get it. How is cold, even freezing air turned into heat? How is it less energy consuming than other heating systems?
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Unless something is at absolute 0 (0K, -273°C) it still has some thermal energy. A heat pump extracts that energy and moves it somewhere else.
One thing you need to know is that during a phase change, matter will absorb or release energy. It releases it when condensing or freezing, and it absorbs energy when melting or evaporating
This is exactly how an air-conditioner, refrigerator, or freezer works. A heat pump is just facing the other way around.
The cold side had a device called an evaporator. It’s a coil of pipes containing a fluid called a refrigerant. In these pipes, the refrigerant evaporates, and it absorbs an amount of energy called the latent heat of vaporization. We then take that vapor and move it through a pump, called the compressor, and into another coil of pipes called the condenser. The compressor increases the pressure, forcing the refrigerant to condense, releasing the latent heat of vaporization, and the surrounding air carries it away as heat. The refrigerant can then go back to the evaporator and repeat the process.
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