heat pump

The novel heat pump, developed by a research group in Israel, consists of a loudspeaker, a resonator, and a thermoacoustic core placed inside the resonator. The core includes a cold heat exchanger, a stack, and an ambient heat exchanger.

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) has developed an ultra-efficient circuit topology for voltage converters with an electrical efficiency of 99.74%. The tech could considerably raise the coefficient of performance for electrocaloric heat pumps and the scientists are now considering components based on semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) for higher power density and efficiency.

Scientists in Italy have coupled a solar-powered air heat pump with a water tank for thermal energy storage to provide hot water to a residential building as a retrofit solution. They claim that the proposed system configuration can achieve a “desirable” thermal performance while reducing annual electricity consumption.

An international research team has fabricated a heat-driven thermoacoustic heat pump prototype that is claimed to achieve a heating capacity of 5.7 kW and a coefficient of performance of 1.4, with a heating temperature of 300 C and a heat-sink temperature of 55 C. The device uses medium/low-grade heat sources and is purportedly able to offer a complementary solution to the existing domestic heating methods.

Spanish scientists have proposed a new approach to combine photovoltaic-thermal panels with a reversible air-to-water heat pump in industrial buildings. The system is intended to provide space heating, cooling, domestic hot water, and electricity.

The Slovakian authorities are offering €140 million ($156.1 million) in rebates for 2023 to cover up to 50% of the cost of buying and installing solar water heaters, heat pumps, biomass systems, solar-thermal collectors, and PV systems up to 10 kW in size.

The European solar landscape changed forever in 2022 and managing the supply chain, grid, and permitting constraints will be key to a solar-dominated energy future for the continent.

Kensol said its new air-to-water heat pump uses a Panasonic Inverter DC twin rotary compressor and is able to achieve a maximum water temperature of 60 C.

A British research group has investigated the economic feasibility of solar-powered heat pumps in China and has found that the country’s northern regions offer the lowest payback time of less than three years. As for the country’s southern regions, however, the adoption of PV-linked heat pumps was found to be “uneconomical.”

Researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE have developed an optimized heat pump propane refrigeration circuit for single-family homes.