Thursday, June 16, 2011

How Heat Pump Works

There are numerous types of heat pumps, however they more or less all work on similar concept of heat transmission or transfer. Heat transmission or transmission considerably instead of burning off fuel to generate heat, a machine drives heat from one area to another. Heat in a natural way passes from top to bottom, this means it has a tendency to move through the area having a hot temperature to an area having a lower temperature. A heat pump utilizes a tiny amount of energy to interchange that operation into opposite, pulling heat out from a somewhat low-temperature place, and then pumping it towards a higher temperature location. Inside a heat pump, this kind of heat will be transmitted from a source of heat (e.g.air or  the ground) towards a heat sink (e.g. our home).

Among the most typical varieties of heat pumps will be the air-source heat pump, where the basic is by transffered  heat coming from the air outside of your house and then pumps it inside via refrigerant-filled coils. On this kind of simple heat pump, there are a pair of fans, refrigerator coils, a compressor and a reversing valve.

Here's the detail how this heat pump works:
  1. On the outside end of an air-source heat pump, a liquid refrigerant is pumped through coils
  2. A fan pulls the outside air over the coils. The liquid in the coils absorbs the heat in the air and expands hot vapor
  3. This vapor is put through a compressor, which increases the pressure and temperature of the gas, and the vapor flows to the indoor coils.
  4. The refrigerator condenses back into a liquid as it cools and flows outside to pick up more heat.
  5. The heat meanwhile - is pumped into the air ducts of your home and distributed throughout the house

This method is popularly known as an air to air heat pump, since it pulls heat coming from outside air and then moves it towards indoor air ducts. Utilizing the suitable customization, air-source systems may also work together with other kinds of indoor heating device and systems.

The most versatile part of a heat pump will be the reversing valve. The system is working in the opposite direction, since it reverses the flow of the refrigeran. Rather than pumping heat inside the house, the heat pump emits it, much like an air conditioner. The refrigerant at this point takes up heat on the indoor side of the device and then passes facing outward, in which the heat will be discharged | emitted and therefore the | and also the refrigerant cools down and flows back indoors to get much more heat

Taken from many sources...