The heatpump, with more energy out than in (FACT)

[angryScientist]

Efficiency is created when the hidden heat or heat of latency of the working fluid is employed.

Latent : "Present or potential but not evident or active."

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin latêns, latent-, present participle of latêre, to lie hidden.]

Imagine:

A working fluid as a liquid is introduced to a vacuum. Some where the liquid must find enough energy to reach the boiling point plus the latent energy needed to make the change from the liquid phase to the gas phase. If it fails to find the energy it will remain a liquid.

Increasing the pressure also increases the temperature. It also increases the boiling point. The benefit of a higher boiling point in that the working fluid turns back into a liquid (hopefully) at a temperature higher than the ambient temp. All that heat hidden in the phase change is released to ambient.

The latent heat is not noticed while moving or compressing the working fluid. Only in the phase changes is the latent heat visible as an increase in heat carrying capacity or COP.

[Nabo00o]

Sorry if this is too straight to the point, but are you saying that the set COP of a certain heat pump is based on an illusion or miscalculation based on the phases of the compression/decompression process and so leads to wrong numbers? I'm sorry if this is wrongly assumed but it was hard for me to understand you correctly, of course I do not have an actual theoretical training in heat pumps and heat machines in general, it is just stuff that I have picked up and learned over the years...

Help me understand   

[ATT]

@Tony
Now.... Just think about that kind of efficiency....
If a power plant was made, then we would absolutely have used 'optimal' conditions....

@Nabo00o
Yes, your thread definitely is making me think in a new direction, visa vi heat-pumps.

I pulled a random specification (submittal data for a GE heat-pump) and went through the numbers to actually 'see' what, if any, possibilities there might be.

I coupled this with an Organic Rankine Cycle generator, using data from a very thorough paper on the subject (including parts list and all experimental data) and, even with a COP of 3.0, it looks 'just' doable (disregarding accumulative transitional losses).

Should the (real) COP of an HP be greater than this, and/or the Carnot efficiency of the ORC be greater than 37%, it would be pretty much a definite 'Go' for this idea.

I'd be happy to post the work-up and links to the ORC data if you like, but it's nothing very dramatic, aside from the fact that it shows the viability of your idea.

Tony

Edit:
I just noticed your reply to angryScientist after posting this. Compression is necessary to initiate a change of state in the refrigerant, this compression adds energy to the system and heat to the medium. Therefore, a heat-pump is transferring the 'sensible' heat from the ambient environment and adding what is referred to as the 'heat of compression' to that transfer medium, this is the 'latent' or 'hidden' heat that is only partially available as sensible temperature increase since work had to be done to achieve a change of state.

Does it affect your position on COP? Only if the manufacturer's stated BTU output of the device allows for this. In a strictly 'consumer' sense, I'm not sure if this sort of thing is allowable (elevating a performance characteristic beyond the 'sensible' capacity rating).

As I may have mentioned before, the manufacturer's data has to be 'real' in order to determine the ultimate viability of the idea.
.

[Nabo00o]

Does it affect your position on COP?

No. If the the COP of a given heat pump can accurately describe its efficiency at generating a potential of temperature in a given medium then I believe it is correct.

As for the theoretical bit, asymmetry explains it perfectly. The only reason to why the heat pump can do this is because it is 'not only' compressing and then decompressing its working fluid, it uses its changed state to interact and absorb potential energy from the environment and brake the symmetric change back and forth in pressure, adding and absorbing temperature. This is not about "sneaking" in extra heat from the outside air, it is about changing the way symmetry or balance forces the different potentials to work.

And yeah Tony I would have appreciated it if you could share that data here 

[angryScientist]

are you saying that the set COP of a certain heat pump is based on an illusion or miscalculation based on the phases of the compression/decompression process and so leads to wrong numbers?

Ya, I'm saying that the extra heat absorbed in the phase change never enters the equation of compression/decompression.

Compression is necessary to initiate a change of state in the refrigerant, this compression adds energy to the system and heat to the medium.

Compression does add heat to the working fluid.
I want to make it clear that the gas after compression is still a gas but it's temperature is now raised above that of ambient. The gas being hotter than ambient is able to let it's heat naturally flow out into the ambient air.

Therefore, a heat-pump is transferring the 'sensible' heat from the ambient environment and adding what is referred to as the 'heat of compression' to that transfer medium, this is the 'latent' or 'hidden' heat that is only partially available as sensible temperature increase since work had to be done to achieve a change of state.

That's not quite correct. The latent heat was introduced in turning the refrigerant from liquid to gas. The gas enters the compressor gets compressed and the energy needed to compress the gas is added (a small fraction of total energy carried by the fluid). With the gas (and the energy it contains) compressed into a small space the energy is now dense enough to be considered sensible heat.


You must have the working fluid at a high enough pressure that it will be a liquid if it reaches ambient temperature.

Say that your heat pump was not fully "charged" with refrigerant and could only operate in the gas phase throughout the system. Then you could never achieve a COP greater than 1 because all the losses in the system.

I'll say it again, you must have a phase change on both the high pressure and low pressure sides of the compressor. The amount of latent heat absorbed does not affect the operation of the compressor. The compressor will never ever know how much heat was absorbed in turning the liquid to a gas (and it never will). The compressor only compresses gas. The phase change parts happen wholly outside the compressor.