Heat Pumps

Heating Pumps: A necessity that we don’t want to give away

Heat energy is transformed form one point or place to another place because of temperature fluctuations and variations. There are numerous forms of Energy and Heat energy is one of them. Everybody know how heating system at home keeps us protected from unbearable minus temperatures and air conditioning from scotching summer heat.

On the other hand pump is a machine that shifts fluids from one point to another. Heat pump is the combination of energy and machine. The mechanism is simple. Mechanical Energy is transformed into heat energy with the help of Wärmepumpen or Heat pump. We have all read in schools, that hot air rise up and cold air (heavier than hot air) settles down. Heat pumps are used to heat in winters or cool down home in summers. They have dual purposes. So you don't need to install separate Air conditioning. One machine to do all!

There are basically two main kinds of heat pumps. Air Heat pump and Water based Fluid heat pumps used in residential sector and then there is oil-based fluid heat pump very popular in commercial sector. Pump moves the fluid to create Heat energy and thus you can set the pressure or velocity of the pump to control the temperature. In simple word: by setting the thermostat at desirable temperature.

If you take a moment and think carefully you will realize that you are surrounded with different types of small heat pumps. There are built in heat pumps in almost all refrigerators, fridges, Car air conditioning and heater, Commercial Freezers at restaurants and Home and big Air conditioners in all most all Malls. Heat pumps are a necessity of life. I am sure nobody wants to sleep on an ice bed in winters. They provide us comfort and relaxsation.

Where there are so many advantages of heat pumps there are few disadvantages as well. Heat pumps are not “effective”. Not in the sense that they don’t cool up a place in summer our warm you beds and living rooms in cold icy winters. The usage of heat energy is more than a normal electronic heater. In plus winter temperatures, Heat pump uses more energy to heat up than an ordinary heating machine. The principle here is that it uses the same amount of energy irrespective for startup irrespective of surrounding temperature.

They are best suited to those areas where weather is reasonable. You won’t find one in Alaska or in Sahara Dessert.

There are basically two main natural heat sources used by heating pumps or Heat Pumps, Air form the atmosphere and Water from the surface beneath. The Air Heat Pumps used the atmosphere air to heat or cool building or offices. They are best suitable to be placed in an area with enough free or empty space around the unit to blow and pump hot and cold air. The based should be a flat and solid foundation. Placed with extreme temperature use heat pumps to heat up their buildings and home.

Placed with cold temperature use other means of heat sources like oil and natural gas, these are again natural resources but are not abundantly available all around the world? We need to install extra equipments and need to take extra measure to use these pumps. For instance, when the oil is finished we need to refill the tanker, unlike with air and natural gas. For Natural gas we need to make sure about the availability in the area. Natural gas is not readily available everywhere. There are CNG stations in some countries and disposable gas tankers are available all around the world. These resources will incur extra costs.

Water source heat pumps are more efficient than air heat pumps or Luft Wasser Wärmepumpe because they extract heat energy directly from earth which is respectively at a constant Heat and energy level unlike air. This technology is also referred as geothermal heat pumps. Earth stores solar energy which the pumps later convert into heat energy to power the system.