Heat Pump

A heat pump is a device which applies external work to extract an amount of

heat QC from a cold reservoir and delivers heat QH to a hot reservoir. A heat
pump is subject to the same limitations from the second law of
thermodynamics as any other heat engine and therefore a maximum efficiency
can be calculated from the Carnot cycle. Heat Pumps are usually characterized
by a coefficient of performance which is the number of units of energy
delivered to the hot reservoir per unit work input.
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Heat
engine
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Note: In calculating the coefficient of performance, or any other heat-engine

related quantities, the temperatures must be the values in Kelvins.
General comments on air conditioners and heat pumps
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Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps

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PV
diagram
Air conditioners and heat pumps are heat engines like the refrigerator. They
make good use of the high quality and flexibility of electric energy in that they concepts
can use one unit of electric energy to transfer more than one unit of energy
Heat
from a cold area to a hot area. For example, an electric resistance heater using
one kilowatt-hour of electric energy can transfer only 1 kWh of energy to heat engine
concepts
your house at 100% efficiency. But 1 kWh of energy used in an electric heat
pump could "pump" 3 kWh of energy from the cooler outside environment
into your house for heating. The ratio of the energy transferred to the electric
energy used in the process is called its coefficient of performance (CP). A
typical CP for a commercial heat pump is between 3 and 4 units transferred per
unit of electric energy supplied.

Heat pump energy flow

sketch

Coefficient of
performance

Energy efficiency
ratio

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Coefficient of Performance
The coefficient of performance (CP) for a heat pump is the ratio of the energy
transferred for heating to the input electric energy used in the process. In
reference to the standard heat engine illustration, the coefficient is defined by

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Heat
engine
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There is a theoretical maximum CP, that of the Carnot cycle :

For a refrigerator, however, the useful quantity is the heat extracted, QC , not
the heat exhausted. Therefore, the coefficient of performance of a refrigerator
is expressed as

For consumer refrigerators in the U.S., the coefficient of performance for

refrigerators is typically recast into a number called the Energy Efficiency
Ratio.

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Energy Efficiency Ratio

The efficiencies of air conditioners and heat pumps sold in the United States
are often stated in terms of an energy efficiency ratio (EER):
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This peculiar ratio can be compared to the more straightforward coefficient of
performance by converting BTU/hr to watts:

Heat
engine
concepts

Therefore CP = EER x 0.292. The range of EER's for air conditioners is

typically about 5.5 to 10.5 with those units for which EER>7.5 being classified
as "high efficiency" units. This is a range of 1.6 to 3.1 in CP.
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Heat Pump Energy Flow

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The electric heat pump can overcome the thermal bottleneck imposed by the
second law of thermodynamics for the purpose of heating a house. As the
illustration shows, an electric heat pump can deliver more heat to a house than
burning the primary fuel at 100% efficiency inside the house. That is higher
efficiency than a typical forced-air natural gas furnace which brings the
primary fuel to the house. This comparison is not quite fair to the natural gas,
however, since you can purchase natural gas furnaces which deliver the gas
energy into heating at over 90% efficiency.
Example of home heating costs.
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