Natural gas fueled heat-pump

[toggleswitch]

Here is a way to help the envinoment and lower your bills sumultaneously.

York's has come up with the "Triathlon" natural gas fired heat pump. (I believe it is being studied in Atlanta, GA.) It can replace a forced warm-air furnace and central air conditionng in that it provides heating and cooling.

Why I cant find their own website for it is beyond me...anyway

A natural gas engine spins a compressor (or does it spin a generator that then feeds an electric compressor?) to heat/cool your home with a heat-pump (reverse cycle air-condtioner)

I'm not necessarily a tree-hugger, but I love stuff like this that requires little to no change in life-style & convenience and helps everyone...

Kinda like moving to F/L washers from T/L....

BONUS 1:

In the winter the waste heat released from combustion to spin the motor is also harnessed and used to heat the home. "Free" heat is extracted from the outdoors. It has a 130% efficiency meaning you get more heat energy back than just burning gas alone.... about 45% more heat "free" assuming an average gas burning heater can harness 85% of the heat energy in the gas.

BONUS 2:

Off-peak (summer) use of natural-gas. Reduces the load on our already struggling electrical grid in summer.

And for those consumers located where one company supplies electricity and gas, I'd go negotiate for reduced rates for both gas in summer and electricity in winter (traditional off-peak) and if they won't budge on a rate reduction, I'd try to at least get a rebate of the difference in cost bringing it down to the cost a tradtional heat pump...

http://www.battelle.org/energy/cases/natgas.stm

 

[toggleswitch]

3-tons?

Three tons, BTW refers to 36,000 Btu/h (a ton of cooling is defined as 12,000 Btu/h)

So if we assume a 5,000 Btu/h need for an avg. room it can handle 7.20+/- rooms.

 

[petek]

Gas fired

central air and gas refrigerators are nothing new and have been sold for decades..refrigerators in particular back into the 40's if not earlier so I'm assuming it's news only for the fact that it's a heat pump enhanced ac system. Gas refrigerators pretty much went the way of the dodo, except for still being used in RV's with propane. Economically though heat pumps are better suited to warmer climes than up north with frigid winters where there's less heat to extract from the outdoor air, unless this system has some further enhancement..I'll have to read up about it.

 

[toggleswitch]

Absorption air-condtioning that uses a heat source directly to fuel an ammonia-based (poisonous) coolant absoultely did die for the most part decades ago. The name associated with absorption systems for home use was "Serval." They still make absortion system refrigeratior and freezers. The new name in abosrption systems seems to be "Robur."

I think this one by YORK differs in that it has a Briggs & Stratton engine to physically spin a compressor and uses "Puron" --a new ozone safe refrigerant

This particular unit appears to be air-to-air. Perhaps later models will use heat stored in the earth as the heat that is moved and concentrated by the heat-pump, then add the waste heat to it. The earth stays at a relatively stable temp all year round just a few meters/yards below the surface.

Traditionally heat pumps did not fare well below 40 degrees F
and my area is basically the northern-most tier in which it works acceptably well.

I think this is a promising product!!

http://www.energysolutionscenter.org/gas_cooling/residential.htm

 

[yaktx]

Engine-driven

I'd be skeptical of a vapor-compression system with an engine-driven compressor. These have seals that begin to leak over time, not to mention periodic engine maintenance requirements.

How many of us have had automotive air conditioners fail, and incurred massive repair costs? I've read somewhere that about 50% of car ACs leak, and that is probably mostly due to failing seals.

Nearly all electric refrigeration units, by contrast, have hermetically-sealed compressors, with the motor actually inside the compressor. This design first appeared on the GE Monitor Top refrigerator about 1927. (Reportedly, GE bought the patent from a French monk!) The unit is permanently self-lubricating, and cannot leak ozone-depleting refrigerants from its seals. This is why there are so many 50+ year-old refrigerators in operation.

There would have to be a very large price-spread between gas and electricity for me to consider a unit such as this. There are situations where absorption cooling is a good solution, but most of them are in industry.

My own house has a 13 SEER split system with gas furnace. It is a 2-ton system, since I have a small house. My electric bill last August was $46, only about $20 more than in the spring, and I was home a lot that month. That may say more about utility rate structures than anything else, but it would be hard for me to look at something engine-driven.

 

[yaktx]

Robur

The Robur units (which, like many RV fridges, are labelled Servel--the original Servel went out of business in the late '50s) are chillers. They chill water and then pump it through pipes to fan-coil units in the house. This is an old, proven technology, but it might be a pain to retrofit this into an existing house.

The neat thing about the Robur units is that they are an affordable way to have air conditioning if you are off the grid.

 

[toggleswitch]

Car Cooling

Yes I agree about the seals and such being a potential source of leaks. I always assumed that in a car it was the vibration and bumps that were cooling-killers.

I'm very surprised that the thermo-electric systems (as seen in the provided link...and I'm sure there are better examples) are not routinely used in cars and elsewhere. From what I have read there are no moving parts (except fans to perhaps distibute the cooling and displaced/generated heat) apply power and one side is hot, the other cold!! [and are electrically reversible to heat as well.] Even if these are not as efficient as compression systems..they seem to be envrionmentally more fit. I wonder if their life approaches infinity...but then again this is what was believed... at first.. about fluorescent tubes for lighting. I personally would have used a Mazda gasoline rotary engine (without pistons) for reliability.

In larger applications or in fuel-oil territory, where there is no natural gas and/or desire to store propane, these would even work with a diesel engine. Off-gridders say diesel engines are hugely more reliable and easier to maintain than gasoline engines.

Here's another idea... Change the law to get the Federal Govt involved in putting a photo-voltiac solar panel (the type that generate power directly) on everyones roof BY LAW and have excess power supplied back into the grid. This technolgy is now realtively affordable. Have the gov't pay to install and maintain this in the national interest. I'll show you how fast the need for imported crude oil plummets!

There are 9 regions in the country (zip codes start with a first digit of 1 to 9)

zero- NJ & CT
one- NY
two .....
nine- California

split the regions into two and then there are 18 years in which to phase this in. Start nearest the equator and keep moving north, baby!!! The concept of net-metering where consumers sell back to the grid @ RETAIL prices (meter spins both forwards and backwards)makes this sound really good..to me at least.

Just a fantasy... but why not... it can't be more expensive than war.........

I apologize for being such a wind-bag.

 

[petek]

speaking of solar panels

There are some newly built communities going up, one here in fact, where each of the garages along the street etc has a solar panel roof tied to the next garage. Not sure how the distribution works but I think it's fed back to the transmission company who then credits the homeowners.

 

[lightedcontrols]

Had a system like this in a Florida house...........

As PETEK says, this is NOT new technology. I had a sysytem of this sort installed in a Florida home back in the early 80's. Not only was it gas heat/ac, but was also a geo-thermal unit. The system had a box like thing (instead of an outside compressor with a fan) that had a gas line that assisted in the cooling and heating process somehow. My brother-in-law is an engineer for Honeywell and still has the same system in his Florida home. I can't remember the brand of this unit for the life of me though.... It also had a pump that circulated water from well points to the "cpmpressor" (heat pump) part of the unit and then fed the water back into the ground on the other side of the yard. It was a very quiet system in both heat and ac mode. The unit with the compressor that would have normally been in the yard, was in a corner of the garage with a gas vent outside and Myers pump motor beside it. You could hear the hum of the compressor and the pump running when the unit turned on. The air handler was fan forced but did NOT have a heat exchanger in it. All heat and cooling came from the A-Coil that was in the air handler. My (natural) gas bill at the time, would run about $12 a month in the heat of the summer which was UNHEARD of at the time in Florida! The electric bill was very low compared to everyone else's. I had that house for about 5 years and never had one moments problem with that unit. Haven't seen or heard of one since. I recall it was quite expensive to install but probably paid for itself in about two years as compared to using just a regular heat pump ac. Mark

 

[Cybrvanr]

Electric cooling systems are now being used in automobiles, but not the thermo-electric types like you see in the electric coolers. The problem with themo-electric plates is that they have terrible efficiency, despite all of the advantages they have. This limits them to small applications, like cooling CPU chips inside computers, chilling water and other beverages in "iceless" glasses, and their biggest application, electric coolers. I have one of these electric coolers, and it works pretty good. The biggest issue is that it cannot produce more than a 40 degree temprature drop, and it consumes a continuous 5 amperes to do it! On a 90 degree Virginia day, this means the interior is only 60 degrees...way to warm to keep food from spoiling. Works great at a room temprature of 70 degrees though, which will make it get near 30 degrees inside!

In desiging the new hybrid automoibles, a big problem cropped up. The cars shut down the gasoline engine when the vehicle is stopped, and will frequently run at low speeds with just the electric motor running. In traditional automobiles, the AC compressor is driven off of the gasoline engine, which obviously would not work in this application. The solution has been to run the AC compressor off of the high-voltage side using the same power source the electric propulsion motor(s) run off of. The systems outght to be extremely reliable, since they maintain a sealed system as good as any common residental central air system.

Take a look at "Home Power Magazine" toggleswich for some neat information on solar energy and other alternative energy sources. I read in the magazine that out in California, they are proposing just what you were speaking of. Tacking $2000 onto the morgage of a new home to install a solar system by code. For the expensive $500,000 homes out there, the extra cost is relatively insiginifacnt, but the solar panels would offset the "standby" loads in the house....one of the most annoying things I cannot stand about modern appliances...THEY DON'T TURN OFF WHEN YOU PRESS THE OFF BUTTON!!! they just stop running, but continue to consume power

The York Triathlon is a neat idea, but still suffers from the inefficiency of an air-to-air design, and since people don't even change the oil or air filter in their lawnmowers, whose to say they won't keep this thing maintained??? I too am worried about the shaft seals, but it seems to be built in a semi-hermatic design, but there is still a chance of the refrigerant leaking past the piston rings

 

[kenmore1978]

car a/c

The problem with car a/c failing is two-fold.

The compressor seals eventually fail.

Many potential leak points where the components connect together. These cannot be eliminated due to the need to be able remove components for repair after accidents, component failure, component removal for access to other parts of car for repairs, and during assembly of the car.

 

[toggleswitch]

Thanks all

Love to hear aobut "new" things all the time.

Sadly it will take our next imminent energy (price) crisis for all of this stuff to eventually come back into focus and becom permanent.

Everyone laughed and manufacturers freaked-out when pilot-lights on gas domestic appliances became illegal.... with what's-his name? Carter, was it? But it eliminated 1/3 of the gas usage per appliance with very little (if any) inconvenience to the appliance-user. Not to mention keeping the indoor air-quality better since homes were also being better insulated at about the same time-period.

So the point is ...technology and conservation will happen... but only when we feel the price of energy sky-rocket.