4kW Heat Pump 

Interesting video in a nice workshop. Good to see you making new videos again. Good luck with all your new discoveries.

Interesting to see a homebuilt unit. I work a lot with heatpumps, and depending on if you're heating or cooling you can get some crazy high efficiencies. one of my units has a rating of 14 HSPF which is insane!

You could get slightly purer propane by putting the bottle in a freezer first. The main contaminant of propane is butane. Butane has a boiling point of -1c while propane is -42c, so the colder the bottle the higher the proportion of propane. Looks good tho, good work! I'd like to do something similar one day.

Happy to see you back, love this idea and system. I’ve played with similar concepts using propane, It’s easy to get it it works surprisingly well as a refrigerant if the system is built for it. What I find great about propane is the fact that the low and high pressure are so much lower that the new refrigerants. Less pressure, less chances of leaks.

In one video with the same topic, the person used propan as well. He said, that the propan for bbq use is added with sulphuric stuff to make it smelly. This sulfuric stuff reacts with the oil in your compressor and you get damage over the time and unusable oil. He removed the sulfuric stuff by transfering the propan through oil before using it in his system. Perhaps that is something to consider.

Don't forget to include refrigerant receiver or even sight glass when upgrading to TXV ☺️

I love super cool complicated looking tubes and wires but then I am a chemical engineer...Great job my friend.

Nice video. I saw the AC Service Tech channel listed in your video description. It is a great resource for learning about HVAC. He recently did a video on electronic expansion valves. You might want to investigate using one of those instead of using a a thermal expansion valve.

When you order your txv, make sure to order one with the proper refrigerant in the bulb. You want it to develop gas pressure on the diaphragm that matches the characteristics of the refrigerant in the line you are sensing. Commercial "fuel" propane is a mix of several gassed, including propane. The only thing they really guarantee is the BTUs per cubic foot equals what you would get if you were burning pure propane. It would be better to get your propane from a refrigerant supplier. You should also look into mixtures of iso-propane and other gasses like iso-butane. There is a concept called glide that can improve your volumetric performance of your system. Looks like a lot if fun. It is interesting to see regulatory agencies begin to rethink refrigerant uses in light of the GHG problems. There are new regulations that allow for the use of flammable gasses, if the volume of gas is under some threshold. You might want to box in your refrigerant loop, and put a flammable gas sensor inside. A "pump down" valving system, can then sequester the gas in the receiver/drier, shut the inlet valve to the receiver/drier, trapping the refrigerant, before it reaches the lower explosive limit. Turn the compressor off and close the valve, when the pressure on the suction side reaches 0.0. All the gas will be safely in the receiver. Use diaphragm type solenoid valves. There are no seals to leak. You can get shell and tube heat exchangers with two output paths.. one glycol and one water. Personally, I'd run glycol and water in the "house" loop all the time. Then I'd run glycol and water mixture to another ground water heat exchanger. Instead of valving refrigerant, valve the glycol side of the heat exchanger. If you want heat as your product, pump the condenser side to the house. If you want cool, pump the evap side to the house.. So long as you maintain flow, the ground water side won't freeze. When you shut it down, make sure the water runs for long enough to evap all the liquid, so it doesn't freeze in the heat exchanger.

I was so happy to see a video from you again

It's amazing to see some material demystifying water-to-water heat pumps, these devices are so prohibitively pricey that they make ground (or pond) pumps very unattractive. Your approach with plate heat exchangers is very unconventional and I'm loving it.

When i build my last heatpump, I used compressor running amps to meter in the charge, it worked very well. I am looking foreward to the performance data on this system. Keep up the good work !

Keep on making dude! I've been searching the internet for ways to DIY a heat pump and there isn't much information out there. This is great! Keep making videos dude!

This is very cool! I am an HVAC designer but I would love to make my own system from scratch and experiment with different thermal storage methods.. it would be very fun to design something that can store waste heat to be used later on. great job! Cheers from Canada 🇨🇦

An absolute awesome set up and pleasure to watch. Thankyou for the insight to your brilliant mind!!!!!!

nice

Well done

Excellent! Thanks for sharing your system is exactly what I want to build except Ideally I want to use co2 instead of propane, not sure if I can deal with the much higher pressures though. If you have any thoughts on that I would love to hear them. Cheers, Kurt

Nice explanation of your project, funny that I have almost exactly the same project. My project was also built in the basement. I have floor heating in the barn that I keep warm with my heat pump. My barn is insulated to the best of my ability to have as little loss as possible. I have been running on my geothermal source for 4 weeks now. income temperature 8 degrees and outgoing my source IN 6.5 degrees. success continues

You are a genius! I will build something like this too once I have my own home.

Nice project! Would've recommended you have the refrigeration cycle on display when explaining the different states of the propane as you were explaining how it works. Can't wait to see more of this project.

Very well done👍👍 Impressive.

Nice to see you around again. Thanks for the video impressive! Cheers!

Measuring the superheat with just temperatures can be problematic. If there is a notable pressure drop in the evaporator it will be off quite a bit. The usual way will be measuring the suction pressure and temperature and calculate it with a saturation table. You really want the superheat as small as possible for best performance, TXVs usually will go for 5K as default. The plate heat exchangers look too small for 4kW. My Rule of thumb is 0,15m²/kW.

Woe, that was a lot of information! Good info for sure. Just a lot to understand in one video

Draw up prints . Nice project

During summer you can heat your bath water and cool your house using the same electricity and save!!!!!

If I could understand any of that I was say "that is brilliant, if this works then you should setup a company to reproduce this system for other people, likely there is big money to be made here"

forgot to report. my heat pump and circulation pumps take total 380Watt/hour. And my barn capacity 12m3 capacity.

Hvac guy but if you plan on doing a house build a scroll compressor is more forgiving about liquid slugs....more then likely your tin can (hermetical sealed reciprocating compressor) is not a good match. make sure the oil matches the ref and that the o ring seals match the oil. also propane is a excellent low temp and should move a lower density volume of gas so you want a compressor to match it. it is better to pull a low vacuum to ensure you don't have nitrogen trapped as you will have high head and a flooded condenser that will cause the moisture to overheat and create acid from your oil

@Thediyscienceguy What heat exchangers did you use?

Hey, can you make an Video where you build an mini Vortex Gas Cannon?

WoW! Impresive! Really nice setup :) What is the cost and how many hours did you spent at the job?

Are you Dutch? Saw some "gamma" materials in your " polished satelite disc solar beam machine". Interesting thing you do with bundled sun rays...extra heat centered in a small area...🙂👍 Maybe a thing to not underestimate is the amount of generated heat could be (sometimes) become as high that it might cause things to ignite/put on fire when it reaches wood or dry grass etc. So let us all be cautious about that.. But like u said,interesting thing you did. Shall add it in my list to try to build sun power heating system for indoors because of the ridiculous gas prices etc.. Did allready pay 917 euro a month for almost a half year...

hi. what the the presure on the heat exchangers? how it seems it need what capable to run at 30bar. what type u use?

I would keep an eye on those valves, if they get too cold they will leak through the stem.

Ik moet egt een soort gelijk systeem maaken voor aan boord en dan de rivier gebruiken om mijn cv te verwarmen Doe het nu met boilers

Hey! Ik ben zelf ingenieur en sinds kort bezig met warmtepompen. STEK en alles in de pocket, en was van plan iets soortgelijks te doen! Ik zie dat je vrij goedkope platenwisselaars hebt gebruikt, dat was ik ook van plan. Maar hoe koppel je die draad aan het (vermoedelijk) SAE koper? Zie een aantal koppelstukken ertussen. Mooie video en uitleg, ik blijf kijken :). Mocht je eens willen sparren lijkt me dat wel leuk!

Evacuating refrigerant is illegal most likely in the European Union but isn't in the USA. However this is a really nice video, other than that.

could we get a tutorial on how to build it. and how to get it running. you could charge 100 dollers no problem.

Nice work! Do you have an idea what the cop would be at different outside temperatures and on the inside, say, 35 degrees Celsius water out of the condensor?

I am kind of curious doesn't capillary tube hurt efficiency over say an electronic thermal expansion valve?

I am looking for a step-by-step guide to build a heat pump, can you recommend me one? I know and understand how it works, but don't have any experience

😀

I'd like to know why you decided to use 4x plate heat exchangers instead of a 'switchover' valve that are used in reverse cycle AC's (don't know the correct name of the valve but it's a simple device)

Hi! Thank you for the awesome video! The thing I have been floating a very similar idea for my summer home which has rather poor insulating properties. Since it's a summer home, temperatures inside the house in the winter need not to be very high: ~5-10C to keep the pipes from freezing. Buying a full system would be prohibitively expensive so I was thinking of making my own system. Do you have any resources you could recommend me (besides the website mentioned in the video)? I would love to hear how the system has worked for you in real life and what COP have you been able to achieve in actual use.

Spill the beans What is a TXV

Love this:)

Ik zie volgens mij Teflon tape op diverse plaatsen in het koelcircuit. Is dat wel een goed idee???

Maybe I failed to understand, but where will this heat pump take the heat from? :) from air-water heat exchanger or from ground water directly?

Making a heat pump using ammonia is harder or easier? It would be more efficient or not?

I would really like to be able to build my own split system. They are not complicated at all but there is no information on how big of a evaporator or condenser you should use. Theirs just nothing on the internet to give any direction. Would be freaking awesome to build your own and control it with an Arduino loaded monitoring sensors. Would be easy if there were some standards to reference

I have a split unit, I am often asked can I use it to heat a room in the winter? But the answer was no, it can only be used for cooling in the summer, otherwise it breaks down, so is this correct? Please answer me.

Nice, just what I am looking for. Do you know of any cheap sources for heat exchangers?

5:50 😂😂😂😂😂

Could you confirm what copper pipe you use (hard or half hard and OD and wall thickness

sream engine?

Gaaf

Just use propane

Distill waste motor in to diesel fuel...

I like the inferior style... Could've worded it better. When it's 100 degrees outside we know it's hot. When it's 0 it's cold. When measuring distance I like feet and inches. They have style or something nice. It is more complex but it's not hard to learn. Not inferior but different. Maybe for fun build something using feet and inches? Less than an inch is fun and once you figure it out it's like you know some code.