An Explanation of How Heat Pumps Work
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Heat Pumps are devices which use small quantities of energy in order to move heat from one place to another. Usually they are used to pull heat from the air or the ground in order to warm a building. They can also be reversed in order to cool a building. They work much the same way as air conditioners do, except that they can do the work of both an air conditioner and a furnace. Therefore, when using heat pumps it is not necessary to install both heating and cooling systems – a single system performs both jobs. They are also more efficient than furnaces because they merely transfer heat rather than burn fuels to make it; but as a result, they work better in moderate rather than extreme climates. For people in moderate climates like Arizona, using heat pumps Arizona rather than furnaces and air conditioners can save considerable money on utility bills.
There are different types of heat pumps, but all of them operate on the principle of heat transfer, which means moving heat from one location to another rather than burning fuel to create it. Because of the second law of thermodynamics, heat naturally tends to flow from a place with a high temperature to one with a lower temperature. They use small amounts of energy to reverse that process, pulling heat from low temperature areas and moving it to high temperature areas – from a heat source such as the ground or air to a heat sink such as a building. A common type of heat pump is an air source one, which removes heat from air outside a building and pumps it through coils filled with refrigerant to the inside.
Air source heat pumps AZ consist of two fans, the refrigerator coils, a compressor and a reversing valve. One fan is used to bring outside air over the refrigerator coils, which transfer the heat inside where it is blown from the coils by a second fan and distributed through the building. The purpose of the reversing valve is to reverse the flow of refrigerant so the system operates backwards. Instead of pumping the heat inside the building, it releases the heat, like an air conditioner does. Then the refrigerant absorbs the heat inside the pump and carries it outside where it is released. Then the refrigerant cools down and flows back inside to take more heat.
Ground source heat pumps work the same way as air source ones except they absorb the heat from the ground, or from a body of water under the ground, and then transfer the heat indoors or vice versa when working in reverse mode. An absorption heat pump AZ is an air source unit which is powered by solar energy, propane, natural gas, or geothermically heated water instead of by electricity. The chief difference between air source models and absorption pumps is that instead of compressing the refrigerant, absorption ones absorb ammonia into water then a low power pump pressurizes it. The heat source boils the ammonia from the water and the process begins anew.
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Source by Alice Lane