Harnessing High Temperature Heat Pumps: Innovative Solutions for a Sustainable Future

The focus on high-temperature Heat Pumps is intensifying due to several key market drivers: the global push for electrification, the urgent need to accelerate the clean energy transition, the pursuit of increased energy efficiency, and the necessity to diversify energy sources. These elements are strongly emphasized in initiatives like RepowerEU.

There is a growing demand for existing R-717 Heat Pumps capable of reaching temperatures up to 95 °C. Additionally, there is a clear market trend towards higher temperatures (above 100 °C), which allows for broader application coverage with efficient energy systems and supports the accelerated phase-out of traditional boilers.

Sabroe’s Heat Pump portfolio, utilizing R-717, offers capacities up to 8 MW at 95 °C. To address applications requiring temperatures above 95 °C, Sabroe has developed the HyePAC product line. HyePAC Heat Pumps can deliver temperatures up to 130 °C by leveraging a combination of R-717 and R-718 in an absorption compression Heat Pump (ACHP) system, based on the Osenbrück cycle. This innovative technology harnesses the benefits of mixing R-717 and R-718, achieving significant advantages:

• Reduced Operating Pressure: While pure water condenses at 1 bar and ammonia at 63 bar at 100 °C, their mixture operates at only 20 bar to supply 120 °C. This reduces the overall system pressure, leading to lower costs.
• Lower First Costs: The use of low-pressure ammonia equipment decreases initial investment costs.
• Lower cost to operate: Increased compressor service intervals due to lower operating pressure and higher Coefficient of Performance (COP) result in reduced operating costs.
• Enhanced COP: The water-ammonia mixture results in gliding heat rejections, enabling increased COP at larger temperature differences.

This technology has been proven with more than 20 installation and more than 600.000 operating hours combined.

In conclusion, the market for high-temperature Heat Pumps is expanding, driven by regulatory mandates, economic incentives, and technological advancements. Sabroe's innovative solutions, such as the HyePAC series, exemplify the potential of ammonia-water Heat Pumps to meet the growing demand for efficient, high-temperature heating solutions in various industrial applications.