‘Electrocaloric’ heat pump could transform air conditioning

I am going to post this article with a link but leave the discussion of feasibility to the more engineering inclined members

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03595-1?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=8b07b9fd1d-briefing-dy-20231120&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b27a691814-8b07b9fd1d-51847612

So - good idea? Bad idea? A wait and see?

 

Concept sounds promising with the benefit being a reduction in the use of environmentally harmful coolants. However commercialization feasibility is still TBD so it is only a good idea if it achieves that goal at the same or lower price point.

On a side note I have been looking into alternative means of air cooling and there is one idea that has been around for centuries in North Africa. It consists of clay pipes with water running over them that cools the warm air entering from the outside dropping the air temperature by 8 degrees Celsius by the time it reaches the inside of the building. Simple enough for a DIY project for those that are so inclined.

 

Heat pump conversions are expensive in New York.

Some More Energy Reality In New York City
November 28, 2023/ Francis Menton

• 
  New York thinks it is going to be the “leader” in showing the world how to transition away from fossil fuels to “green” energy. Our politicians and bureaucrats have not bothered with things like feasibility studies or demonstration projects showing that this can be done, because after all they are geniuses and it is up to the little people to figure out the details.
  
  
• So the energy transition has been ordered up via statutes filled with mandates and deadlines and penalties, with no attention paid to feasibility or cost. We now all get to sit back and watch as this crashes and burns.
  
  
• In New York City, the main statute on this subject, enacted in 2019, has the title of Climate Mobilization Act, also known as Local Law (LL) 97. The most significant impending mandates are for reductions in “emissions” from buildings, with the first deadline for residential buildings coming right up in January 2024. Few building will fail the 2024 cap, but the mandated emissions limits keep ratcheting down over time. The mandate for 2030 for residential buildings over 25,000 square feet is set such that it cannot be met if the building continues to use gas or oil for heat; so effectively this is a mandate to convert to electric heat by that time.
  
  
• So how big a problem will it be for these buildings to convert to electric heat? Nobody really knows. However, things are about to change.
  

READ MORE

 

Newsflash! New York is only a tiny part of the world

 

Real world examples will always be small samples.

 

Will they? To be honest your post was only marginally relevant to mine - just another excuse to promote WUWT disinformation

 

It was not from WUWT. I always read before I post. I recommend that.

 

I kick myself for not going with a heat pump when I replaced my natural gas furnace a couple of years ago.
It was winter and I had a tenant at the time so I just took the fastest route.

 

I found a video for this it's kind of old I'm surprised that I don't know about it.



As to whether it's a good idea or bad idea that's hard to say. I think it would be dependent on how common gadolidium is, how much of a temperature differential you can make using it. How well it scales and how good of a conductor you can make.

It's a start.

I would say that refrigeration doesn't require Freon or the other variants there of, you can use anything that is easy to go from liquid phase to gas phase. Alcohol have you ever record rubbing alcohol in yourself and then it felt cool that's evaporative cooling. I think water would produce too much heat and it would require too much pressure. But long time ago they used ammonia, they even used propane in refrigeration and propane is a fantastic refrigerant. It's just it has that ultra combustible property that makes it a little dangerous. Same with alcohol you have an alcohol vapor and you need that on the cool side for your AC or your heat pump it's the same thing two sides of the same coin.

We created the freon and puron and all these other things I forget all the names for them R 518, R134a R12 do in so forth to be and hurt enough to wear a leak doesn't cause them to burst into flames but still give us the refrigerating properties that we want.

This is a clever idea that uses a different principle it will be interesting to see what happens.

 

Well I've heard heat pumps work really well down to a certain temperature and then they're not very good. I don't know how true this is I live in Texas I have an electric furnace it's essentially a giant toaster and that's all there needs to be it's never not been enough.

 

We've got a heat pump here in Virginia. I think (don't quote me on it) that it can get overwhelmed below about 20 degrees F. But it's also equipped with electric coils if it gets that cold. But, of course, the electric coils are more expensive.

But this is Virginia. Walked one of our dogs this morning at 21 degrees but that's not real common. Unlike Detroit where I grew up and most folks had natural gas furnaces.

 

It’s rare to go below freezing in Vancouver. Many people have heat pumps around here.

 

Yeah I heard below 20 degrees is tough for them but like I said I have no experience with that.

 

No it was worse - manhattencontrarian who I gather is some lawyer who is posting *****

 

I take it you found nothing of substance to criticize.

 

Only useful in areas with a dry climate.

One of the strange things when I moved to Alabama was that for the first time in over a decade I actually had to have air conditioning in my home. And when I tried to explain an evaporative cooler to them, they thought I was crazy and could not understand how something like that would work.

 

Politicians often tend to not think about how complex a thing like a "city" is, and that a single solution is not really possible for everybody.

Good example, I still remember being stationed at Camp Lejeune in the mid to late 1980s. That was still in an era where almost every military base had their own power plant, in order to reduce dependence upon the local power grid in the event of say a war or natural disaster. And much of the Mainside of Lejeune got a lot of their services from that plant. Including not only power, but also hot water and steam for heating. A huge chunk of that base got all three from a single location, and in cold mornings it was kind of enjoyable to drive by or run past the steam pipes that ran all over the base.

Not unlike much of New York City, which to this day still has a functioning steam network. And many older buildings which still use a central boiler for steam and hot water.

There is always a serious problem when trying to push modern concepts and technology into old infrastructure. Is the city also willing to subsidize all of the old buildings to allow them to come into compliance with this new law?

 

Yeah if it doesn't get past 20°, then it's probably more than enough.

 

Yes evaporative coolers or swamp coolers as they used to call them. A lot of the times are even sold as humidifiers. I take it Alabama is humid. I live in a very humid place. It's either AC or you're being casseroled to death. A swamp cooler will just make you hotter.

 

Oh good heavens, yes. Average summer humidity was over 85%. Just slightly higher than when I lived in North Carolina, at around 75%.

Hell, I knew I was back in "The South" when I was first moving to Alabama in 2003. Driving on the highway near the Texas-Louisiana border, and seeing the trucks leaving contrails on the highway without rain. It was just that humid, that their passing through the air was enough to cause condensation that splattered on my windshield.

In a huge area of the US, it is simply too humid for such systems to work. Pretty much anything from around 200 miles West of the Mississippi River to the East. Most especially anything from Austin, Texas as well.

One advantage of living in as many places as I have, I have had to live and adapt to a great many climates. I have lived in eight states, and four countries outside the US (from Alaska down to California, Connecticut to Alabama). Everything from the 10% or less humidity of the Mojave or Chihuahuan Deserts, to the 90% humidity of Panama. From sub-zero regions of the US, to 130+ f regions of the Middle East.

That is why I have largely settled in SW Oregon for my final years. It gets cold, but nothing excessive. Hot in the summer, once again nothing excessive. And humidity is comfortable without being super high or low. I have had more than enough of having to live in the extremes.

 

The one that always surprises me even though I've lived here most of my life I've seen this phenomenon and it still is something to behold. It can be 90° outside at night, the errands so humid you wave your hand through the air and it's wet but you see your breath and it's 90°

 

For the time being, my advice is, stay clear of any kind of heat pump, unless you seriously want to waste money.

 

Actually, heat pumps are highly efficient and I have had them installed in most of my homes.

In fact, when we bought our last trailer, the rooftop AC was broken. So I replaced it with a heat pump, which not only was more efficient than the old unit that had been there before, it was also a heater that did not use propane. And the last mobile home I owned we did the same thing. Pulled out the swamp cooler and natural gas heater and installed a heat pump.

However, I to be honest do not expect much to come from this. 99% of the time when somebody posts something like this, it eventually just vanishes as nothing ever comes of it. And there are tons of them, all essentially nothing more than variants of "junk science", but the environmental nutcases love each and every one of them.

Like water from the air, diamonds from the air, gravity batteries, I can just go on and on and on. They literally chase after anything that crosses their path and think it is the most amazing thing in the world. And even when it is thoroughly busted they still insist it works, but normally things like "corporations" killed it for... reasons.

 

They're not great in the UK. The advice here is to avoid until they can get the design/technology right.

Three examples I've come across -

Speaking to a gas engineer, he went to cut off the gas supply to a local farm that was installing heat pumps. Couple of months later, he had to go back and reinstate the gas connection because heat pumps were unreliable, so just uses them as back up.

Local posh village, expensive house being built, I helped to tile the bathrooms. They got a ground heat source pump fitted where you core drill a few hundred metre hole for the loop. A few years later, I heard they use a gas boiler instead.

Construction mate, his elderly mother had a heat source pump fitted as part of a council grant, can't afford to run it, uses far too much electric. So she doesn't have the heating on and boils the water instead.

My advice is, keep your gas boiler and go buy two or three extra as spares.

 

Sorry, none of those claims you just made make a lick of sense. Gas boiler? WTF, who in the hell even uses boilers anymore?

And a hundred meter hole for a loop for a heat pump? Once again, WTF? In most areas that will actually put one below the water table. Do you honestly think for some reason that heat pumps need a hundred meter deep hole in order to work?

It's obvious you have absolutely no idea what they are. But they are hardly "new technology". Heat pumps have only been around for over 165 years now.

Oh, and we had better remove them from all electric cars. Are you even aware that because they have no moving parts and no water reservoir, that electric cars all use heat pumps for both heating and cooling?

Sorry, almost everything you said was absolutely nonsensical.