Heat pump basics

1. What’s the magic behind heat pumps?

It all starts with the sun. The sun warms up our atmosphere and the outer layer of the earth’s crust. In one year the energy sent to the earth by the sun is 50 times higher than the total consumption of energy on our planet. This makes the sun a vast and inexhaustible source of energy.
On sunny days you can feel the thermal energy from the sun on your skin. But actually, there is always lots of thermal energy in the air, even on cold winter days or even at night. And not only in the south of Spain for example, but also in countries like Sweden or Norway where thousands of houses have got heat pumps already.

2. So why do people hesitate?

Heat pumps remain a mystery for many people. The concept of 'heat' transfer from a cold source to a cold interior might not be intuitive to everybody at a first glance.

3. How does it work?

A heat pump only needs a heat source (the outside air), two heat exchangers (one to absorb and another one to release heat) and a relatively small amount of drive energy to keep the system going.
A heat pump extracts thermal energy from the environment.
In the case of Daikin Altherma the source is the outside air. The pump extracts the energy at a certain temperature, increases that temperature and then releases it into a medium which in Daikin Altherma system is the water running to your low temperature radiators, under floor heating system or fan coil units. Between those two media the heat is moved by means of a working fluid.

4. Compressor – the essence of heat pumps

As the working fluid passes through the evaporator and extracts heat from the air, it turns into a gas. This is where the compressor comes up. When you compress a gas, the heat energy in the gas is concentrated together with the molecules and as a result, the temperature rises.
Inside your house the second heat exchange takes place when the compressed gas enters the condenser, a surface which is colder than the gas itself. Finally, the gas condenses and releases heat – the heat that warms up your house.