So, assume a compressor of some sort that compresses outside air into a copper coil that runs inside a house, with the other end going through the house’s envelope again and releasing the air back outside, with enough resistance (likely through some sort of expander that recuperates as much energy as possible from the still-pressurized exhaust) that the air stays under high pressure as it runs through the coil. Now, the compressed air going through the pipe will be hot, so it’ll transfer heat to the air inside the house. When it expands back at the end, it’ll be colder than it was when it got in.
Barring a misunderstanding on my part, we now have a theoretical heat pump that needs no specific refrigerant and thus avoids all the issues we have with those. It’s also a simple design, so there’s no way I’m the first one to come up with it. Why do we build heat pumps that operate on specific fluids within closed circuits?
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You want a refrigerant that will evaporate/condense within the working temperature range. That latent heat will increase the amount of energy that can be pumped without needing to change the temperature of the heat reservoir.
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