Heat pump is a group of technologies which is able to move heat from one source to a sink where sink and source have different temperature. Heat pump can be categorized into different way they work: Magnetic refrigeration, Stirling engine, Thermoacoustic heat engine, Thermoelectric cooling, Absorption heat pump, Vapor-compression cycle.

Types of heat pump

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The most common technologies are the absorption heat pump and the vapor-compression cycle. Even if the other technologies are very interesting and should continue to be developed, they are not part of the solution for Switzerland to become carbon neutral in 2050. Vapor-compression heat pump are the technology used since decades for all the residential heat pump installed in Switzerland. Absorption heat pumps are used in industries and are mainly used to create cooling.
The main research in the residential heat pump domain is nowadays related to its noise, its control using artificial intelligence or smart algorithm, its refrigerant, and field measurement which survey how really efficient residential heating systems using heat pump are in the field.

Vapor-compression heat pump

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Large scale heat pumps are mostly used for industries, commercial buildings, thermal grids, and multi-family residential buildings. Industrial applications often require the use of high-temperature heat pumps including steam-generating heat pumps and mechanical vapour recompression. These industrial heat pump technologies are still at the early stage of maturity and many projects are going with Swiss Industries and Swiss Universities such as IntSGHP, HTHP-CH. As industrial heat pumps are a key technologies to decarbonize the industrial sector, the subject is also international and Switzerland is participating in a few EU and IEA projects such as push2heat, annex48, or annex58. SWEET DeCarbCH is active in the domain of industrial heat pump helping Swiss industries with guideline to speed up the pre-studies of industrial heat pump projects, financially helping a project with the help of the SFOE SWEET P&D grants, and can also serves as consulting to help putting Swiss industries in contact with the right partner for their respective projects. A cost estimation tool developed by OST is also available here.

Mechanical vapor heat pump efficiency are calculated using the heat output over the electrical energy. As the heat output is bigger than the electrical energy, the efficiency is higher than 100%, therefore the efficiency for heat pump is called Coefficient Of Performance (COP). The COP has a thermodynamics limitation, called the COP Carnot and is calculated using the condensation temperature (T_hot) over the difference between T_hot and the evaporation temperature (T_cold). A good approximation of a real heat pump efficiency is to take 45% of the COP Carnot, this is due to pressure loss, heat loss, and motor efficiency.

References

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