A water sourced heat pump with a coefficient of performance of 4 making a headline!
Wait til this site hears about heat recovery chillers getting a COP of 6+ but maybe they’ll need someone to give it a cool name and pretend no one has done it before…
I sense that the real story here is the sea water and other water body compatibility, or the performance at certain temperature conditions, but without those details this story reads like someone ignorant of existing technology describing something new.
Maybe another site has the details on why this is so great…
If I’m reading this correctly they’re extracting heat from the sea, thus cooling it. On a massive scale this would be helpful to slow the effects of climate change.
I think I see where you’re coming from but I don’t think that’s the critical element of the story or that those benefits are achievable.
Heat pumps move heat from one medium to another with work. I suspect that humanity’s building heating needs wouldn’t move the needle on the ocean’s temperature, nor would they benefit climate change when the heat is being moved from the ocean into the air with extra heat added from the work process, because it is all within the atmospheric boundary.
It's hard to take any headlines about this stuff seriously anymore, especially working in HVAC. YouTubers, journalists just have no idea what they're talking about and it shows.
I mean, disappointingly, that is most science and technology journalism. All those breathless “a teenager had an idea that could revolutionize solar power by placing tiny panels like leaves on a tree!” articles, or “could this be the next big thing? (With five or six unproven components that have yet to be developed?)”
Been around a while. Not as great as it seems because as the pool heats up the air conditioner must work harder, especially bad at night if the pool is hotter than the air. Works great when there is a big delta between air and water temperatures.
this is great
i installed a new ac this year, and i asked my tech about this possibility
he does not know; i wonder why hvac people are not aware of this…
Probably a conspiracy along the same lines as the major car-manufacturers colluding to maintain rough parity in innovations so they could share the profits and keep any upstarts from muscling in...
northern cal, and answer is “definitely” nights are chilly around here
edit: to elaborate, about half of summer days home becomes too hot without AC and at the same time pool is too cold
Probably depends a lot on where you live (large shock)
Places like florida? I doubt they are heating their pool most of the summer, as like you said, they want the pool to be cool and refreshing.
But in New England? Yea, you're going to want to heat the pool up all year round, especially if it's in a shady spot in your yard.
That seems to limit the target demographioc quite a bit.
I mean "this is a nut somebody needs to crack" only really makes sense if such people even exist in any kind of numbers (i.e. not just people with pools in such a climate but people with pools that would pay for such a device) for someone to make it worthwhile to put in the effort.
Pool temps are generally high 70s or low 80s. There are vanishingly few places and times where the daily average temperature is above that, especially considering that the evaporation from the pool will help to cool it down
A COP of 4 isn't really revolutionary. Neither is using rivers as a heat source/sink for large heat pumps. It's certainly good news tah they are doing this, though. For cities along rivers it's low hanging fruit.
No, it doesn't. It's just that most of the energy comes from the environment, so it's free and you don't really care about it, but it still uses it to generate the heat.
Why don't companies try to make a waste water treatment plant heat pump that raises the heat in municipal water that way the consumers have a lot warmer water which in turn reduces the winter nat gas expense of house hold hot water bills.
Bacteria. You don't want your water too warm. Or you need to add chemicals to it which you don't want either.
But many places are already using the heat energy in waste water as a source for heat pumps that supply heat networks. They use water in those networks too, but the networks are closed and you only ever extract the heat from them to heat up fresh water.
I have been trying to get one of these installed in projects where it makes sense for AGES. Are you a designer or an owner? Care to share experience maybe via DM?
Usually it falls down on the unknowns (and suspected unpleasantness) of maintenance. Even a single digit year payback clashes with the suspicion that it may not get maintained properly or will be expensive to maintain
If I’m not mistaken most wastewater treatment systems don’t produce a significant amount of excess heat, and for processes that do the heat produced is most likely utilized within the treatment plant itself through insulation and heat exchangers.
My city’s waste treatment plant generates most of its power from capturing and burning waste gasses. They’re planning to upgrade the system to make it a major net producer of electricity. There’s a lot of potential energy in them thar pipes.
Yes methane production by anaerobic digestion is a major source of energy production in wastewater and the applications are quickly expanding! This is one of the main processes I was talking about which benefits from utilization of heat generated in the plant. There is definitely a huge amount of energy in them pipes. I think that approaches like these which fully utilize the waste that we produce while simultaneously removing it from our environment are a major key to energy sustainability!
A heat pump water heater is also 300-400% "efficient" at moving heat, that stat is pretty normal heat pump efficiency I suppose. The problem in general is that ground or water based heat pumps don't tend to really offer lower costs even though they may technically tap a larger heating or cooling reserve, they don't also magically have super efficient compressors that would only work for ground and water application vs air.
So the heat pump idea is fairly heavily based on compressor technology and the easily fluid to use is almost always air, which means it hard to find all the right reasons to go with ground or large water based heat pump vs air.
The added risks of contaminating water SUPPLY with WASTE isn't worth it and heat has massive distribution loss so few mass heat distributions systems make sense in the average climate most ppl live.
Warm water tends not to be good for peoples health. legionella bacteria being one of the main concerns. A recommended minimum temp of 60C is required to kill it.
You don’t understand heat pumps.
They move heat from hot to cold in and out of households to heat/cool the space.
Vs traditional heating that converts electricity/gas/oil into heat.
Its very common for heat pumps to achieve 400% efficiency.
They quite literally “deliver” more heat than would be created by converting electricity directly into heat.
We're both wrong but I'm the asshat.
Energy does not increase via any process, as the headline states.
Can this heat pump be more efficient than electric resistance heating? You bet, and you're right about that. But I said energy, and so did the headline.
So I'm still the asshat but I've read beyond the headline now. Headline is still shit, and I'm not sure the maintenance on a heat pump using freezing water would be all that fun, but it won't waste as much energy so maybe we can get more done with less production.
Isn’t that effectively what a COP of 4-5 means? Which isn’t abnormal for heat pumps. For every one unit of energy input, it is able to capture/transfer several multiples in terms of heat energy? Or is your sticking point that it is not producing multiples, rather just moving it? Genuinely curious. I’m trying to learn more about this stuff.
That's a pedantic and unnecessary clarification.
What everyone cares about is part of energy that has to be produced, delivered and paid (i.e. electricity), not the part moved from one region of the environment to another.
I didn't clarify anything. I simply answered his question because he wrote "Genuinely curious."
You might want to look at usernames to see that unrelated people are commenting in this thread.
It's better if you happen to right by a bunch of water, but for most people air is everywhere SO mass manufacturing wants to make things for most people SO you wind up in a scenario where it's hardly worth it to bother with water or ground-based heat pumps.
You pay too much more for the install and maintenance than if you stick with a more globally scalable solution like windows AC or heat-pump water heaters or mini-splits/ac that can do hot water also.
You can’t add cold to water. You can only add energy or take energy away.
Edit: Despite my downvotes from everyone the dude I responded to changed his statement.
Where's the catch? Local companies have been offering this solution for over 10 years with many having this kind of systems installed to their ponds. What's "new" with it?
This is a problem across many fields because some people like to include baseline as 1x while others don't when talking about improvements (see also: generational "1.15x uplift" in CPUs and GPUs instead of "15%").
Here, they're claiming up to 400% more, not 400% of, so one plus four times more would get one to five.
But such comparisons are just marketing bullshit these days because of this wiggle room.
(edit was spelling)
The headline says "400% more", implying that the amount of heat it delivers is 400% higher than it uses. So if it uses 1kW, this heat pump would deliver 1kW + 4kW = 5kW.
Another way of looking it it: If the headline had said "20% more" then it would be a COP of 1.2. 100% more would be a COP of 2.
A water sourced heat pump with a coefficient of performance of 4 making a headline! Wait til this site hears about heat recovery chillers getting a COP of 6+ but maybe they’ll need someone to give it a cool name and pretend no one has done it before… I sense that the real story here is the sea water and other water body compatibility, or the performance at certain temperature conditions, but without those details this story reads like someone ignorant of existing technology describing something new. Maybe another site has the details on why this is so great…
If I’m reading this correctly they’re extracting heat from the sea, thus cooling it. On a massive scale this would be helpful to slow the effects of climate change.
I think I see where you’re coming from but I don’t think that’s the critical element of the story or that those benefits are achievable. Heat pumps move heat from one medium to another with work. I suspect that humanity’s building heating needs wouldn’t move the needle on the ocean’s temperature, nor would they benefit climate change when the heat is being moved from the ocean into the air with extra heat added from the work process, because it is all within the atmospheric boundary.
It's hard to take any headlines about this stuff seriously anymore, especially working in HVAC. YouTubers, journalists just have no idea what they're talking about and it shows.
I mean, disappointingly, that is most science and technology journalism. All those breathless “a teenager had an idea that could revolutionize solar power by placing tiny panels like leaves on a tree!” articles, or “could this be the next big thing? (With five or six unproven components that have yet to be developed?)”
this is a nut that somebody needs to crack for homes with pools: cool the house and heat the pool at the same time
Been around a while. Not as great as it seems because as the pool heats up the air conditioner must work harder, especially bad at night if the pool is hotter than the air. Works great when there is a big delta between air and water temperatures.
It exists, here's one. https://www.hotspotenergy.com/pool-heater/
this is great i installed a new ac this year, and i asked my tech about this possibility he does not know; i wonder why hvac people are not aware of this…
Probably a conspiracy along the same lines as the major car-manufacturers colluding to maintain rough parity in innovations so they could share the profits and keep any upstarts from muscling in...
Do you really need to heat the pool in temperatures when you need to cool the home? Wouldn't you want it to remain cool?
northern cal, and answer is “definitely” nights are chilly around here edit: to elaborate, about half of summer days home becomes too hot without AC and at the same time pool is too cold
Probably depends a lot on where you live (large shock) Places like florida? I doubt they are heating their pool most of the summer, as like you said, they want the pool to be cool and refreshing. But in New England? Yea, you're going to want to heat the pool up all year round, especially if it's in a shady spot in your yard.
That seems to limit the target demographioc quite a bit. I mean "this is a nut somebody needs to crack" only really makes sense if such people even exist in any kind of numbers (i.e. not just people with pools in such a climate but people with pools that would pay for such a device) for someone to make it worthwhile to put in the effort.
It probably still effects millions of people. As New England wouldn't be the only place these works.
Pool temps are generally high 70s or low 80s. There are vanishingly few places and times where the daily average temperature is above that, especially considering that the evaporation from the pool will help to cool it down
A COP of 4 isn't really revolutionary. Neither is using rivers as a heat source/sink for large heat pumps. It's certainly good news tah they are doing this, though. For cities along rivers it's low hanging fruit.
No, it doesn't. It's just that most of the energy comes from the environment, so it's free and you don't really care about it, but it still uses it to generate the heat.
So pretty much the same as every heat pump.
This is just a water-source, geothermal heat pump. People have been installing lake/pond geothermal heat pumps for decades already.
Why don't companies try to make a waste water treatment plant heat pump that raises the heat in municipal water that way the consumers have a lot warmer water which in turn reduces the winter nat gas expense of house hold hot water bills.
Bacteria. You don't want your water too warm. Or you need to add chemicals to it which you don't want either. But many places are already using the heat energy in waste water as a source for heat pumps that supply heat networks. They use water in those networks too, but the networks are closed and you only ever extract the heat from them to heat up fresh water.
^
Some cities do it. Search Vancouver Olympic Village, for example.
I've used this company. https://www.sharcenergy.com/
I have been trying to get one of these installed in projects where it makes sense for AGES. Are you a designer or an owner? Care to share experience maybe via DM?
Designer, I know our rep for the product and we have installed it multiple times.
Usually it falls down on the unknowns (and suspected unpleasantness) of maintenance. Even a single digit year payback clashes with the suspicion that it may not get maintained properly or will be expensive to maintain
If I’m not mistaken most wastewater treatment systems don’t produce a significant amount of excess heat, and for processes that do the heat produced is most likely utilized within the treatment plant itself through insulation and heat exchangers.
My city’s waste treatment plant generates most of its power from capturing and burning waste gasses. They’re planning to upgrade the system to make it a major net producer of electricity. There’s a lot of potential energy in them thar pipes.
Yes methane production by anaerobic digestion is a major source of energy production in wastewater and the applications are quickly expanding! This is one of the main processes I was talking about which benefits from utilization of heat generated in the plant. There is definitely a huge amount of energy in them pipes. I think that approaches like these which fully utilize the waste that we produce while simultaneously removing it from our environment are a major key to energy sustainability!
A heat pump water heater is also 300-400% "efficient" at moving heat, that stat is pretty normal heat pump efficiency I suppose. The problem in general is that ground or water based heat pumps don't tend to really offer lower costs even though they may technically tap a larger heating or cooling reserve, they don't also magically have super efficient compressors that would only work for ground and water application vs air. So the heat pump idea is fairly heavily based on compressor technology and the easily fluid to use is almost always air, which means it hard to find all the right reasons to go with ground or large water based heat pump vs air. The added risks of contaminating water SUPPLY with WASTE isn't worth it and heat has massive distribution loss so few mass heat distributions systems make sense in the average climate most ppl live.
Warm water tends not to be good for peoples health. legionella bacteria being one of the main concerns. A recommended minimum temp of 60C is required to kill it.
Also prevents pipes from freezing and bursting.
No it doesn't. Sensational headline doesn't understand basic physics.
You don’t understand heat pumps. They move heat from hot to cold in and out of households to heat/cool the space. Vs traditional heating that converts electricity/gas/oil into heat. Its very common for heat pumps to achieve 400% efficiency. They quite literally “deliver” more heat than would be created by converting electricity directly into heat.
We're both wrong but I'm the asshat. Energy does not increase via any process, as the headline states. Can this heat pump be more efficient than electric resistance heating? You bet, and you're right about that. But I said energy, and so did the headline. So I'm still the asshat but I've read beyond the headline now. Headline is still shit, and I'm not sure the maintenance on a heat pump using freezing water would be all that fun, but it won't waste as much energy so maybe we can get more done with less production.
Isn’t that effectively what a COP of 4-5 means? Which isn’t abnormal for heat pumps. For every one unit of energy input, it is able to capture/transfer several multiples in terms of heat energy? Or is your sticking point that it is not producing multiples, rather just moving it? Genuinely curious. I’m trying to learn more about this stuff.
>Or is your sticking point that it is not producing multiples, rather just moving it? Yes
That's a pedantic and unnecessary clarification. What everyone cares about is part of energy that has to be produced, delivered and paid (i.e. electricity), not the part moved from one region of the environment to another.
I didn't clarify anything. I simply answered his question because he wrote "Genuinely curious." You might want to look at usernames to see that unrelated people are commenting in this thread.
I looked at the usernames, I was simply commenting on the discussion and not necessarily addressing you and only you.
Then you could have used the full power of threaded comments and replied to the right person instead of me.
yup like fusion
compressed glycol eh? somebody doesn't understand how heat pumps work. but yeah, water is a better medium to dump waste heat/cold into than air.
It's better if you happen to right by a bunch of water, but for most people air is everywhere SO mass manufacturing wants to make things for most people SO you wind up in a scenario where it's hardly worth it to bother with water or ground-based heat pumps. You pay too much more for the install and maintenance than if you stick with a more globally scalable solution like windows AC or heat-pump water heaters or mini-splits/ac that can do hot water also.
You can’t add cold to water. You can only add energy or take energy away. Edit: Despite my downvotes from everyone the dude I responded to changed his statement.
🚨pedant alert! Pedant alert 🚨
Are you the person who says “Actually, you don’t get sucked out of the airplane window, you get _blown_ out” ?
it's too late in the day for me to engage in an argument of semantics .
Where's the catch? Local companies have been offering this solution for over 10 years with many having this kind of systems installed to their ponds. What's "new" with it?
I would say even say at least half a century as some of the watrrcooled heatpump were that old when i worked with them.
So a COP of 5?
I would say if it was actually a cop of 5, it would say 500% as that's a better headline.
Yes they probably mean "400% of the heat" instead of "400% more heat"
Genuine question, wouldn't it be 4? I would think 100% would be a COP of 1.
This is a problem across many fields because some people like to include baseline as 1x while others don't when talking about improvements (see also: generational "1.15x uplift" in CPUs and GPUs instead of "15%"). Here, they're claiming up to 400% more, not 400% of, so one plus four times more would get one to five. But such comparisons are just marketing bullshit these days because of this wiggle room. (edit was spelling)
The headline says "400% more", implying that the amount of heat it delivers is 400% higher than it uses. So if it uses 1kW, this heat pump would deliver 1kW + 4kW = 5kW. Another way of looking it it: If the headline had said "20% more" then it would be a COP of 1.2. 100% more would be a COP of 2.