Sanyo Eco C02 Heat Pump

[cholcombe]

Any ideas when this is coming to the US? Or.. any ideas how someone might go about buying and installing this? It looks amazingly more efficient than my oil burner radiator heater and electric resistance water heater. With the C02 refrigerant in there it can operate down to about -20F I think it said. It hardly ever touches zero degree's Fahrenheit here so I can imagine this replacing my oil heater and my electric heater. Anyone else excited about this heat pump?

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by cholcombe

Any ideas when this is coming to the US? Or.. any ideas how someone might go about buying and installing this? It looks amazingly more efficient than my oil burner radiator heater and electric resistance water heater. With the C02 refrigerant in there it can operate down to about -20F I think it said. It hardly ever touches zero degree's Fahrenheit here so I can imagine this replacing my oil heater and my electric heater. Anyone else excited about this heat pump?

Sure, this is really the thing. Just the refrigerant alone makes something like this a really great idea. The efficiency is still under study.

From what I understand, CO2 need to be under much higher pressure for the phase-change to happen where it should, so the components will need to be re-designed to withstand the higher pressures. This could take some time. Since the US prioritizes war over development of more efficient heating devices, we will have to wait until Asian engineering to deliver the products.

Check this out:

At first, the phaseout of chlorine-containing refrigerants such as CFCs and HCFCs led the industry toward another class of fluorocarbon refrigerants, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that did not contain chlorine and thus did not harm the ozone layer. However, in the 1980s, scientists identified global warming as a major environmental threat, and the global warming impact of HFCs came under scrutiny, leading many researchers and manufacturers to reconsider “natural” refrigerants such as CO2, hydrocarbons, and ammonia, because these substances have negligible direct global-warming impact and ozone-depletion potential. The signing and ratification by many countries of the Kyoto Protocol has provided greater impetus to look for alternatives to fluorocarbon refrigerants; several European countries have already begun restricting their use and are planning for an eventual phaseout.

Carbon dioxide is non-flammable and non-toxic in contrast to other natural refrigerants—hydrocarbons (flammable) and ammonia (flammable and toxic). Furthermore, it is inexpensive, widely available worldwide from numerous suppliers, and not subject to venting restrictions. The high operating pressures of CO2 also provide a potential opportunity for system size and weight reduction. The major challenge, however, is to design a cost-effective, efficient, reliable system that accommodates the unique characteristics of CO2, most significantly, five times the typical system operating pressure and a low critical temperature that requires cooling a supercritical fluid rather than condensing a two-phase mixture.

(more here...)

Another issue, the political one, is that since CO2 is a naturally occurring substance, it is not patentable. Since the giant chemical companies that make and license synthetic refrigerants stand to lose huge amounts of money, and since they also have huge amounts of money to lobby and bribe the government, we may never see CO2 used as a refrigerant.

...here is another interesting reference.

...and also here.

-AC_Hacker

[cholcombe]

Yeah the R744 looks excellent. I really hope that the refrigerant producers of America don't stop it. Thanks for the info AC_Hacker. Really good stuff you dug up!

[Phantom]

Even though CO2 cannot be patented if a chemical company creates a proprietary mix of say 90% CO2 and 10% other gases that will change the properties they could patent that. So all they would have to do is add an oil and a gas that is stable at higher pressures then market it as greener technology.

[cholcombe]

Good point Phantom. Is there anything stopping people from buying the Sanyo Eco heat pump and installing it here? From what the site says it is a contained system, no hvac service tech required. Sanyo CO2 ECO Heat Pump Granted you would still need a plumber possibly to help you hook it up.

[Xringer]

How much is €8,184.15 in devalued USDs?

When they went to R410A at 500 PSI, they seem to have gotten away with using the older hardware.
But, the pressure of a tank of CO2 at room temperature is about 900 PSI.
I'll bet there is a whole different thickness of hardware needed for CO2.
Not gonna be cheap..

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by cholcombe

Is there anything stopping people from buying the Sanyo Eco heat pump and installing it here?

Wow! Things have moved much farther than I had realized.

I did a search on this product and found that it is available in UK, Denmark, and possibly other Scandinavian countries. Apparently not in the US at this time.

The price quoted in UK is:

• 5495 pounds = $8476 for the 4.5 kW (15,000 BTU/hr) model,
• 6995 pounds = $10,791 for the 9kW (30,000 BTU/hr) model.

The price seems out of line when compared to compariable Fuitsu Halcyons:

• $1,552 for Fujitsu 12RLS, 16,000 BTU heating (COP 3.51, under lab conditions)
• $2,600 for Fuitsu 30 RLX 32,000 heating (COP 2.78, under lab conditions)

But to be fair, the ECO CO2 does also supply hot water, which the Fujitsu does not. Also, the ECO CO2 can function down to -25C (-13F).

At first glance, the performance figures look pretty fair...

COP when outside temp is 7C (45F) = 3.1
COP when outside temp is -15C (5F) = 1.8
COP when outside temp is -20C (-4F) = 1.6

But then, check this out:

(NOTE: these figures are when incoming water temp = 30C (86F) and output temp is 50C (122F))

(** Who on this blog has winter cold water temp of 86F? **)

But one of the most interesting things about this technology is that it is capable of directly producing water at temperatures of 65C (149F).

Although this is a bit to the low side for existing standard hydronic radiators, it is within the realm of reality.

Conventional vapor-compression machines were pretty much limited to around 50C (122F) which yielded underwhelming performance when used with previous radiating devices... but worked out well when radiant areas were very large, for instance making the entire floor a radiator.

But then there is the Eco part:

The earth is, after all, priceless.

-AC_Hacker

[S-F]

That pricing scheme doesn't make much sense. Neither do the testing methods. If you measured the COP of a GSHP with 85 degree incoming water imagine what your COP would be..... Higher than the 3.whatever they mention. Rumor around town has it that Mitsubishi is making a mini split that "is as efficient at 0 as it is at 30 degrees" and it doesn't cost 10 K.

[AC_Hacker]

Originally Posted by S-F

Rumor around town has it that Mitsubishi is making a mini split that "is as efficient at 0 as it is at 30 degrees" and it doesn't cost 10 K.

Mitsubishi makes several models. The good Mitsubishi heat pumps are very good. They're well made and efficient.

But I'm afraid that, "is as efficient at 0 as it is at 30 degrees" is really just hyperbolic sales talk. Such a statement is in violation of Carnot's efficiency theorem.

Don't let such statements persuade you to buy a Mitsubishi, and don't let such statement's dissuade you either... because Mitsubishi is well respected.

I don't know why salesmen would utter such rubbish, when such a good product should be easy to sell...

-AC_Hacker

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by AC_Hacker

But I'm afraid that, "is as efficient at 0 as it is at 30 degrees" is really just hyperbolic sales talk. Such a statement is in violation of Carnot's efficiency theorem.

That is totally possible as long as they do not state the unit of measure and slightly round down. So to correct the statement "is as efficient at 0C as it is at 30F degrees"