I don’t get it. How is cold, even freezing air turned into heat? How is it less energy consuming than other heating systems?
In: 14
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.
It’s less energy consuming because the amount of heat that gets moved by the heat pump contains more energy than the amount of energy needed to run the machine. As opposed to direct sources of heat, which usually simply convert energy in a different form, into heat energy.
Basic answer
A Heat Pump is an air conditioner running backwards.
AC = make refrigerant super cold so heat in house is absorbed into it, super heat it so that the refrigerant is much hotter than the outside air, the heat is now absorbed into the outside air and blown away
in Heat mode = Make refrigerant much colder than the OUTSIDE air, so the heat from the outside air (yes, even if it’s cold outside, there’s still heat energy) is absorbed into the refrigerant lines, super heat it so that the refrigerant is much hotter than the inside air, the heat is now absorbed into the INSIDE air and blown throughout the house
There is a threshold below which this becomes less efficient as there is less heat to keep up with that demand which is why most systems will have a secondary heat source.
Unless you have geothermal in which case substitute the ground deep below for the outdoor air, where it’s much more stable and consistent year round.
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