I recently had a discussion about ACs and how they heat up cities.

Then I found an article about theoretical increase of efficiency of acs by using the heat pulled from a room to run a thermoelectric device and getting some of the energy back that was used in the ac.

I‘ve had this downstream thought many times already: since hot air is basically just energy stored. Could we theoretically pull (all?) the energy from the air (depending on desired temp) to cool it and casually fuel our society’s energy needs?

  • sanzky@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    some AC/ heat pump models pull the heat in the air and put it into water. those have existed for quite some time. look for “air to water heat pump”.

    of course, there is some residual heat from the operation of the machine itself. and once the water is hot enough it will continue to release the heat into the air, but they do release way less heat into the air than regular AC units.

    • fckgwrhqq2yxrkt@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Could we run a water line through it from the water heater and use it as a supplemental water heater? At least we would be using that energy for something then.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      So we can attach a steam turbine that’s driven by the water loop and connect that to the grid. Then we can keep pumping heat into the water loop. Right? 😂