Webinar on the title – “Heat Pumps – An introduction” was conducted by Aspiration Energy in September 2017.
Heat Pumps are devices that transfer heat from a colder area to the hotter area by using mechanical energy.
Working of heat pumps is based on taking heat from the ambient air to deliver it for the processes which requires it, by exploiting the low boiling points refrigerants.
It consists of an evaporator, compressor, condenser, expansion valve – the same as in a refrigerator.
How is this a sustainable device? We shall look into this.
It has to do with its efficiency or coefficient of performance – which is, counter-intuitively more than one.
Heat pumps as described before use electrical energy to pump heat from the ambient air to the process, electrical energy being the input and heat as output. In the case of heat pumps the energy delivered as heat is at least 2 times more than the electrical energy, the remainder of the heat being transferred from the ambient air.
In mechanical terms, it means that every unit of electrical energy used produces 2 units (kW) of heat energy.
Air conditioners do the same process.
Here’s how:
Power consumption = 2 Units (1 Unit=1 kWh)
1 Ton of refrigerants = 3512 W
A conventional AC delivers an output of 1.5 tonne.
Energy Output = 3512 x 1.5 TR = 5268 W
Therefore the efficiency = Output/Input
= 5.268/2
= 2.634
This is also how heat pumps work with the only difference being that heat is delivered and not absorbed as in the case of ACs.
This makes heat pumps a clean and sustainable source of heat and they are being used extensively in industries as alternative replacements for boilers.
The full webinar talks about this and more for educational purposes.
The presentation can be viewed below.
The video recording of the presentation is below.