The heat pump industry should play its part when it comes to reducing GHG emissions, while ensuring heating/cooling for all, according to several speakers at the 2019 Heat Pump Summit, which took place in Nuremberg, Germany on October 22-23.
“There are no passengers on spaceship Earth; we are all crew,” said Peter Wegener from Business Development Holland, quoting Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. The heat pump industry must step up and become part of the climate-crisis solution rather than the problem if we are to avoid a temperature increase of more than 1.5°C (2.7°F).
“Our industry sector, and particularly heat pumps, can play a very important role,” Andrea Voigt, Director General of the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment said, adding that: “We have to decrease the energy consumption by at least one-third by 2050, if we want to achieve the 1.5°C (2.7°F) goal, and double the use of renewable energy, and heat pumps are ideally placed to satisfy both requirements.”
The summit included several presentations on energy efficiency, energy certification of heat pumps, and natural refrigerants.
Biagio Lamanna, R&D manager from Carel spoke about CO2 technology and its use in single-stage, cascade and dual-stage cycles, detailing the evolution of its use in in high-efficiency solutions like mechanical subcooling, parallel compression, and ejectors. Lamanna showed the audience how ejectors can improve the coefficient of performance (COP) by 12% and explained that while ejectors can be used with other refrigerants, the benefits are highest with CO2.
Our industry sector, and particularly heat pumps, can play a very important role”
Andrea Voigt, EPEE
Water as a refrigerant was also explored, by Jürgen Süss, Independent Consultant for Efficient Energy, who spoke about its use in traditional compression systems, but also touched upon its potential use in adsorption and absorption technologies.
All presentations from the summit can be found here from October 31.
The 2019 Heat Pump Summit took place at the Nuremberg Messe, in Nuremberg, Germany. It included more than 35 speakers with 260 attendees from more than 30 countries. The summit focused on industrial, commercial and municipal applications for heat pumps under the theme “Connecting Experts.”
