Hotter Heat Pumps could help Electrify Industrial Heat
Most energy in industry is used to provide heat. The most efficient way to decarbonize heat is to use heat pumps powered by green electricity. Which leads to the question: What temperatures can they achieve?
Industrial heat is a major consumer of fossil fuels. Estimates are that around two-thirds of the energy used in industrial applications is used to generate heat.
Industrial heat applications are diverse, and so are the temperatures - from relatively low-temperature use cases like drying food to extremely high temperatures required to melt metals or produce cement.
Electrification of heat will play a major role in the decarbonization of industrial heat. But different needs will require different electric heating technologies.
Heat pumps are a particularly efficient way to generate heat from electricity. They can achieve something that sounds like it violates the laws of physics: They can provide more energy than they consume.
Of course, no technology can violate the laws of thermodynamics. Heat pumps achieve their efficiency by taking energy from a lower temperature source. In the simplest case, this can be outside air. By compressing a heat carrier, they increase the energy per volume and therefore the temperature.
Utilizing this trick, heat pumps can often generate efficiencies of 300% - 500%, depending on the application, sometimes even higher. The efficiency of a heat pump is measured as the Coefficient of Performance (CoP), which is the amount of energy a heat pump provides per input energy. For example, a heat pump providing 4 kilowatt hours of heat energy per one kilowatt hour of electricity would have a CoP of 4 or an efficiency of 400%.
These high efficiencies mean that even in an electricity grid still primarily powered by fossil fuels, heat pumps will usually lead to a decrease in emissions.
Heat pumps for low temperatures below 100 degrees Celsius (~210 °F) are an established technology and are often used in home heating. Industrial heat pumps up to 150 degrees Celsius (~300 °F) are also available, though they are not widely used yet.
Given the huge efficiency advantage, the question is: Can heat pumps provide much higher temperatures? I talked to some people who think so.
You can find the full article here: