These New Heat Pumps Will Make a Real Difference

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Most buildings across the globe are heated with gas and oil despite heat pumps being a much more energy-efficient alternative. While some countries have been keen on adopting them, others have been slow on the uptake. Why have some countries been hesitant to push the technology? Could a new upgrade to heat pumps make them a more viable heating option? Let’s have a look.

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What does civilization mean to you? To me the most  essential part of civilization is shelter. Yes,   YouTube comes a close second of  course. But on top of the list,   I have a safe, dry, warm place to live. And it’s not just me. Residential heating  

Plays a special role in peoples’ life  in countries where temperatures outside   frequently get a little uncomfortable. But  most buildings are currently heated with   gas and oil. Globally, the carbon  dioxide emissions from residential   heating make up 10-12% or so, though  they strongly depend on the season.

This is why a lot of governments have  pushed their people to install heat   pumps. At least where I live those have  not been particularly popular – so far.   But this might change soon because  a major upgrade to the technology   is now hitting the market and it’s  really good news. Let’s have a look.

A heat pump is basically a type of electric  heating. It uses electricity to move heat from one   place to another, against the direction the heat’d  naturally flow. Your freezer for example also uses   a type of heat pump. It pumps warm air out of the  pizza and into your room. An air conditioning is  

Also a heat pump, it pumps warm air out of  your room and into your neighbour’s garden.  Heating with a heat pump works the same way but  in the other direction, it pumps heat into your   house by making the outside colder. Or maybe one  could say that it pumps cold out of your house. 

Guys I’ve been thinking about this sentence  for a full hour now. Does it make sense to   speak of moving around cold as the negative of  moving around heat, but please chime in below.  There are three major types of heat  pumps, the simplest one uses air from  

Next to the house. But you can also  use a water reservoir if you have one,   or air from deeper underground. This has the  advantage that the temperature is usually more   stable down there, but it requires drilling. Either way you can use the heat pumps to warm  

Up the air in your house, or the  water that you use for heating. What’s the point? The point is that  a heat pump is very energy efficient   basically because it just sorts heat rather  than creating it. Exactly how much carbon  

Dioxide is released in the operation of  a heat pump depends on how you power it,   but if you go by energy, it’s half to a  third of a typical fossil fuel heating.   That’s why most countries have pushed  house owners to install heat pumps.

And that partly worked. Heat pumps are  on the rise internationally and in some   countries it’s been going well: Sweden, Norway  and Finland lead the way in adoption with 40%   of households using heat pumps already, and in  the United States it’s about 15%. But in other  

Countries the uptake has been very slow.  In Europe, we have the UK at the bottom of   the list with less than 1%, and Germany  isn’t doing much better with about 2%. The problem with heat pumps is that they  have limits below what some of us are  

Used to from civilization, and that  makes us uncomfortable. Why is that? Well, you have probably noticed that no matter  how long you run your freezer, it doesn’t   reach a temperature of absolute zero. That’s  because your freezer isn’t entirely airtight,  

Because the container walls also conduct heat,  and because the efficiency of the cooling cycle   decreases the larger the temperature difference  between the inside and outside. This means for   all practical purposes, your freezer has  a minimum temperature that it can reach.

It’s the same with those heat pumps just that they  have a maximum temperature that they can reach,   and the larger the temperature difference you want  to have, the less well they’ll work. With the heat   pumps that have been on the market so far, it’s  been really difficult to reach temperatures above  

50 degrees Celsius, especially in the winter. Now you might say you don’t want your room   at 50 Celsius anyway and I hear you. But the  typical water cycle heating that most houses   have with fairly small heating elements use  temperatures between 50 and 90 degrees Celsius.  

That’s because if the heating elements  are small you need them to be really hot. You can make do with lower temperatures if  you heat larger areas instead. This is why   heat pumps are often used together with  floor heating, that way the temperature  

Doesn’t have to be that high. But the  floor heating themselves are expensive,   and then the insulation of your house  also matters for them to work well. I believe these are the major reasons why in  some countries heat pumps have been slow to  

Catch on. They work well in new houses. But many  old houses are not well enough insulated for   those pumps to indeed heat them. If you walk through a typical   residential street in the UK for example  you’ll see lots of brick houses, many of  

Them with wood framed windows. A heat pump just  won’t get them warm, and they’re a nightmare to   insulate. Even if you insulate them that causes  other problems, for example with humidity. I suppose that’s why the infamous British-born  activist group “Extinction Rebellion” now has  

A splinter group which calls itself “Insulate  Britain”. I really admire the change of direction   there. They went from raging against  human extinction right to “Excuse me,   is it possible that we could get some  state aid to retrofit our brick walls?”

The issue with old houses in Germany  isn’t quite so pressing because a lot   of those were bombed down in the second world war. However, heat pumps aren’t popular here for other   reasons, the first is that they’re expensive,  even with the support you get from the government,  

And that electricity is also expensive in Germany.  Also, heat pumps make noise because you need to,   well, run that pump. And then there’s the issue  that most house owners know that heating trends   come and go and I guess they figure they’ll just  sit it out. At least that’s what I was thinking.

However, it doesn’t look like the heat pump trend  is going away, rather it’s just getting started.   The reason is that a new generation of heat pumps  has just come on the market, and they really make   a difference. They use a new refrigerant,  that’s the stuff which transports the heat,  

Called R 290 which is a type of propane.  This much increases heat pump efficiency.  These new heat pumps reportedly reach temperatures  up to 70 degrees Celsius, which is comparable to   what your oil or gas heating delivers. Even  better, the R 290 refrigerant is one that  

Doesn’t damage the ozone layer when it escapes. The idea itself is not new, it’s been around   for years, but it wasn’t until last year that  it hit the consumer market big time. Lots of   companies are now selling the new heat pumps.  Mitsubishi for example has declared R290 the  

Future of home heating, LG agrees. Panasonic is  on it too. The things are all over the place. The praise of R290 is pretty much universal.  I’ve tried to dig up criticism but the only   thing I’ve found is that R290 is extremely  flammable which is not great seeing that  

The most common problem with heat  pumps is that they leak. Then again,   these pumps don’t contain a huge lot of the  stuff, so I guess the risk is tolerable.  That said, using propane doesn’t remove  the problem that heat pumps need more   energy the higher the temperature  difference you want them to create.

This means that while you could use  the new heat pumps to reach water   temperatures above 70 degrees,  the relevant question is whether   that’s any better than just heating with  electricity.I guess we’ll find out soon. The potential of these heat pumps is huge. A  recent study found that in the United States  

Alone, heat pumps could save between one  and two thirds of carbon emissions from   the residential sector, that’s between 5 and 9%  of the national emissions. That’s a big chunk. So I think that’s a good development and it could  make a real difference. In principle. In practice,  

The company which owns our house isn’t even  fixing our half-broken oil heating, so I don’t   think we’ll see any heat pump here soon, I hope  that Insulate Britain is doing better than that. It can be difficult to make sense of the news  you find online, but I found Ground News to  

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