Heat pump heating technology has recently become more and more popular because the technology has become cheaper and public awareness and acceptance has increased. Touted as more environmentally friendly residential heating systems, they are rapidly gaining popularity, at least in part due to various government green policies and tax breaks.
[Gonzho] I have been busy developing my own Arduino Powered for the past few years Open source heat pump controller, And the project log shows some good details needed to start the experiment Heat pump Generally speaking, if that is your game. Or, you can use it to give new life to the old system through Arduino brain transplantation.
In essence, they are very simple devices; a certain refrigerant passes through a heat source, absorbs part of it, then flows elsewhere, is compressed, increases its temperature, and then loses the increased heat where the temperature needs to be increased.
This heat source may be a river, a large number of pipes buried in the ground, or just the air around you. The source and quality of the heat source and the required operating temperature of the system determine the overall efficiency, and the use of a ground source system can even discharge the excess heat directly into the ground and store it later when needed. This may be the result of residential cooling systems, or even directly from solar heating installations.
This heat pump process is reversible, so just flip some valves, you can exchange the hot and cold ends, and turn the space heater into a space cooler. This whole process can be traced back to this super-genius Scottish professor, William Cullen Who was the first person on record to demonstrate artificial refrigeration in 1748.
The power required to run the compressor pump and control device usually comes from electricity, at least in non-vehicle applications, but the total power required is significantly lower than the resulting effective heating (or cooling) power.
We have introduced some heat pump hacks before. For example, this person has been using geothermal heat to heat his house for many years, but not many platforms are designed to experiment from scratch.
The related GitHub project provides gerber files and Arduino code, So you have a good starting point to build your own heat pump system.