Heat Pumps Today

Info www.carrier.com/commercial/en/eu/products/heating-air-conditioning/water-to-water-heat-pumps/30xwhv/ www.acrjournal.uk/heat-pumps 21 I N S T A L L A T I O N S Another recent project uses a combined 8MW of Carrier AquaForce ground-source heat pumps in two phases to increase the quality of hay production and enhance returns at a farm in Leicestershire. The systems use an array of pipes buried in trenches for gathering energy from the ground, with a total pipe length of some 24km. Once the heat pumps have upgraded the energy collected, it is transferred to air handling units serving the crop drying rooms. "The quicker and more e€ectively hay can be dried, the greater the yield, and the greater the return for the producer,” says Bradley Martin. “Traditional methods following harvesting involve leaving bales in the fields to dry naturally, which can result in significant losses due to spoilage in wet conditions. Bringing the crop inside and drying it in a controlled environment results in higher quality and minimises losses." Th Carrier solution was found to use less power and cost less to run than other options with a Coe–cient of Performance (CoP) of 5.24. Alternative options considered required the use of heat pumps Project 2 based on up to 80 compressors to achieve the desired output to dry the hay. "Due to their higher capacity, the Carrier solution required just three heat pumps based on a total of six compressors," says Bradley Martin. "This simplifies maintenance and significantly reduces servicing costs for the end user over the lifetime of the equipment." Innovative, e–cient solutions such as AquaForce heat pumps support Carrier’s aim of reducing customers' carbon footprint by more than 1 gigaton, part of its 2030 Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) Goals.