Technology
Heating and cooling is accomplished by moving a refrigerant through the heat pump's indoor and outdoor coils. Like in a refrigerator, a compressor, condenser, expansion valve and evaporator are used to change states of the refrigerant between a cold liquid and a hot gas.
When the liquid refrigerant at a low temperature passes through the outdoor evaporator heat exchanger coils, ambient heat is used to cause the liquid to boil. This boiling or change of state process amasses energy as latent heat. The vapor is then drawn into a compressor which further boosts the temperature of the vapor.
Passing into the building, the vapor enters the condenser heat exchanger coils where it transfers heat to indoor air, which is drawn across the coils by a fan. As the vapor cools, it condenses back into a liquid, and releases its latent heat to the air passing over the condenser unit.
Exiting the condenser, the cold liquid refrigerant is under high pressure. The refrigerant passes through an expansion valve which reduces the pressure, draws in heat and allows the refrigerant to re-enter the evaporator to begin a new cycle.
Most heat pumps can also operate in a cooling mode where the cold refrigerant is moved through the indoor coils to cool the room air.
Read more about this topic: Air Source Heat Pumps
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)