What are the mechanics of the heat pump process?
Anyone who has a refrigerator or an air conditioner has witnessed the operation of a heat pump, even though the term heat pump may not be familiar. These machines, rather than making heat, take existing heat and move it from a lower temperature location to a higher temperature location (hence the term heat “pump”). Refrigerators and air conditioners are heat pumps which remove heat from colder interior spaces to warmer exterior spaces for cooling purposes. Heat pumps also move heat from a low-temperature source to a high-temperature space for heating. An air-source heat pump, for example, extracts heat from outdoor air and pumps it indoors ground-source heat pump works the same way, except that its heat source is the warmer warmth of the earth. The process of elevating low-temperature heat to over 100 degrees F and transferring it indoors involves a cycle of evaporation, compression, condensation and expansion. A refrigerant, usually R-22 refrigerant, is used as the heat-transfer mediu
