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What’s new in AC 2020?

rhl_ | Posted in Mechanicals on

I am wondering if any of our esteemed editors or contributors have attended the recent 2020 AHR Expo?

Any new products to discuss? Any heat pumps for residential use?

I didn’t go to the conference myself, but, I know that Mestek has been testing a new SpacePak Air to Water Heat Pump: a Split System Inverter Air- to-Water Heat Pump. Similar in spirit to standard air-to-refrigerant systems. They announced this in 2019, and it is coming to market this year apparently. It seems like the performance is not that competitive with state of the art ASHP design (COP 2.66 at 95 deg outdoor air temperature and 50 degree water temperature), although, I suppose performance isn’t everything.

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Replies

  1. Expert Member
    Dana Dorsett | | #1

    >"Any C02 based heat pumps for residential use?"

    It's just really hard to make a decent CO2 refrigerant system that would work as efficiently as refrigerant based systems in space heating/cooling applications. Sanyo had a decent version of such on the market about a decade ago in Europe, but without being able to leverage a phase-change from liquid to gas to liquid the delta-Ts have to be pretty high to be efficient. CO2 refrigerant systems are great for making 130F+ water out of 40F water (or 10F air), but not for making 130F water out of 120F return water in a hydronic heating loop.

    1. rhl_ | | #2

      Ok, fair point, I just meant to combine two topics on this note in a sentence as a motivating example of something novel that might show up at a conference.

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