DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

Although the heat energy that a heat pump can provide is greater than that consumed for its operation, the low prices of both electricity and fossil fuels and the investment required have meant that its expansion as a widely used appliance has been relatively small. The efficiency of a heat pump is measured by its COP (Coefficient of Performance), which is the ratio between the electrical energy consumed and that supplied in the form of heat: usually, depending on the equipment and climatic conditions, it can range from 2 to 6. This efficiency decreases as the temperature of the cold source from which the heat is extracted decreases, and is not usually usable in practice if it is below -4º and not very efficient up to +4.5º.
A recent publication by the International Energy Agency (IEA) entitled The Future of Heat Pumps (https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-heat-pumps) sets out the consequences that widespread adoption of this medium would have on energy security, user costs, the use of assistance and efforts to tackle climate change: it is estimated that global use of heat pumps could reduce CO2 emissions by 500 million tons by 2030.
Although sales and therefore employment in their manufacture, service and maintenance have almost tripled in developed countries in the last ten years, public subsidies are needed to popularize their purchase, according to the IEA, as the initial cost of heat pumps is two to four times higher than that of a boiler supplying the same amount of heat powered by natural gas. Since heat pumps can have different collection variants, such as air/air or air/water, and even water/water and geothermal, they are proposed as the basic means for reducing emissions in buildings. Its application in industry remains to be further explored for processes involving work at low temperatures, such as paper, food, chemicals, etc.