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Heat Pump Dictionary
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers Concerning Heat Pumps
A heat pump is a type of “transport device” that raises the temperature level of the heat that is freely available in the environment.
How does a heat pump convert low temperature heat into higher temperature heat?
It extracts stored solar heat from the environment – ground, water (e.g. ground water) and air (e.g. outside air) – and transfers this, along with the operating energy, in the form of heat to the heating and hot water system.
Heat cannot transfer from a cold body to a warm body on its own. Rather, it flows from a body with a higher temperature to a body with a lower temperature (Second Law of Thermodynamics). For this reason, the heat pump must raise the temperature of the thermal energy extracted from the environment using operating energy to a level suitable for heating and DHW preparation.
Heat pumps work like a refrigerator – in other words, the same technology is applied but the function is reversed. Heat pumps extract heat from a cold environment which can then be used for heating and DHW preparation.
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