4 ms·
Isn't the refrigeration loop "tuned" for a particular operating range? Like, if I want a heat pump for extracting heat from cold winter air, the operating envel
by function_seven 8y ago
Isn't the refrigeration loop "tuned" for a particular operating range? Like, if I want a heat pump for extracting heat from cold winter air, the operating envelope will be set up differently than for a unit designed to dump heat into hot summer air.
I'm guessing here. I just know that the outside condenser and inside evaporator (in a cooling setup) need to match each other pretty well to avoid damage to the compressor or inefficient operation.
- extrapickles 8y agoIt mostly depends on what refrigerant is used. All heat pumps need to be able to change the phase of the refrigerant, which becomes too hard above or below certain temperatures. You can extend the range by having a higher pressure pump, but that reduces efficiency.
- mikeash 8y agoI'm sure there are many parameters to tune, although I don't know the details. But a "heat pump" is just a machine that pumps fluid in a certain way to make one end hot and another end cold. With a traditional AC, the hot end is placed outside and the cold end inside. What the HVAC folks call a "heat pump" is a particular variety that can reconfigure itself to put the hot end inside. If you were so inclined, you could heat a space by taking an AC and turning it backwards so the hot end was inside. (This would be pretty dumb unless you needed to heat stuff up in the summer, since the temperature range it's built for would be all wrong otherwise, but it works.) I'm sure there are heat pumps that don't cool well when the temperature is too high, but I don't think it's a general property of all of them.