Heat pumps are becoming a hotter topic in the clean energy future
Amid the growing list of pathways consumers and businesses have available to pursue the cleaner energy future, including the typical options they’ve heard time and again (like electric vehicles or solar panels), one that’s more recently popping up on the popular radar: heat pumps. Of course, heating buildings has been seen as essential for decades, so why are heat pump opportunities catching headlines now? And how do they differ from the alternatives to heating homes and businesses that have been steadily used over the years?
Leaning into heat pumps, people have increasingly discovered, can be one of the key ways to decarbonize, especially as the technological focus increases and public policy takes notice of the opportunities. But these trends don’t mean that everyone is on the same page with this journey, so keep reading to start to fill in some of the blanks about heat pumps at this moment in time.
What are heat pumps?
When broken down to the basics, heat pumps are actually a pretty straightforward technology: they work in the same way as a refrigerator but with the process reversed for the goal of outputting warm air (similar to how the refrigerators or air conditioners will typically have a vent of warmer exhaust air that’s typically guided outside of the building).
On a more technical basis, the step-by-step process for heat pumps generally follows these steps:
Heat gets sourced from an outside source (which can include the ground or outside air)
That heat gets pumped over a ‘heat exchange surface’ that is located on the exterior of the heat pump
The heat surface exchange passes that heat to the liquid known as a refrigerant, warming the liquid to the point it turns into a warm gas
That warmed gas moves through a compressor to increase the pressure which simultaneously elevates the temperature of the gas
The heated gas now moves over another heat exchange surface that creates heat air that can be blown into the building directly or transferred to a central heating or hot water system
When the heated gas is done transferring its heat, it cools down to the point that it returns to a liquid and is brought back to the beginning of the process
This process continues until the desired interior temperature is reached
Getting to know heat pumps also requires understanding that different types of heat pumps are used based on varying technologies, geological resources, and regions:
Air-to-water models, which are most compatible with traditional radiators and underfloor heating systems
Air source models, which take the heat from the exterior air (even on a cold day, these heat pumps are effective at extracting latent heat from the air)
Ground-source models, which take heat from the ground directly
Hybrid heat pumps, which are paired with traditional gas furnaces
Absorption heat pumps, a relatively new type that utilizes heat to drive the system (rather than the typical mechanical energy used to move the liquid/gas in a traditional heat pump)
And with the current focus on how heat pumps can reduce energy costs and fossil fuel use, more research is constantly taking place to create new types of heat pumps with improved efficiencies and lower costs all the time.