While the two are occasionally utilized reciprocally, a heat pump and an air conditioner aren’t necessarily the same thing. Both utilize the refrigeration cycle, yet in a one-mode AC system, the cooling agent only ever travels in one direction. In heat pump systems, that circulation is reversible, enabling the system to alternate in between cooling as well as heating features as required. But to do so there are some specialized parts that a heat pump needs, two examples of which are:

  • The turning around the valve
  • Inspect valves

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The Turning Around Shutoff

For a heat pump to be able to switch between home heating as well as cooling down settings, the flow of the system’s refrigerant need to be relatively easy to fix. That’s where the reversing valve comes in. Additionally called a four-way valve, the turning around valve draws away from the cooling agent to the next element in the cycle according to its setting.

In the heating setting, fans strike outside air throughout the outside coil, as well as the air’s thermal power is taken right into the cooling agent within the coil’s tubes. The cooling agent is then sent out through the turning around valve, which since it’s the in-home heating mode, guides the low-pressure gaseous refrigerant to the compressor.

The refrigerant leaves the compressor as a high-pressure, high-temperature vapor. It then goes to the indoor coil, where the colder air in the area flows throughout it, which heats up the space and condenses the refrigerant to fluid as it does so. The fluid cooling agent then streams to the system’s thermal expansion shutoff, where it increases to a gas before being sent out throughout the outside coil, as well as rebooting the cycle.

In cooling mode, a gaseous, high-pressure cooling agent leaves the compressor as well as gets in the turning around valve, which is placed to divert the cooling agent flow to the outdoor coil. There, warmth is got rid of from the cooling agent into the ambient environment, condensing the refrigerant to a high-pressure, low-temperature liquid in the process.

Next off, the cooling agent heads to the thermal expansion shutoff where its stress, as well as temperature level, are lowered before entering the indoor coil as a two-phase blend. The cooling agent’s journey through the indoor coil finishes the phase modification from fluid to gas as energy from the warmer interior space is taken in right into the cooling agent as well as the area is cooled.

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