2023-05-11 10:18:12
Anyone who owns a house that is poorly insulated will soon be told that a heat pump is not a good idea. At most a hybrid pump would be smart, one that runs a gas boiler on the coldest days of the year. But that’s excluding propane.
Last week, TNO dealt with a nonsense report from February that stated that heat pumps have a very poor environmental score. According to TNO, a heat pump is almost always better for the environment and climate than a gas-fired central heating system. And if heat pumps start using propane or helium as a refrigerant in the future, the picture will only become more positive, according to the research institute.
Already for sale
With the last comment, TNO misses the point a bit. You don’t have to wait for the future. There are already heat pumps with propane for sale. And there will be more, if only because the EU will ban other, much worse, refrigerants. Refrigerants transfer the heat from the outside air to the water in a central heating system or the air in a room. They are an essential part of a heat pump.
But those refrigerants have a disadvantage. If the heat pump leaks and the refrigerant is released into the atmosphere, the refrigerant will also cause heating. The old refrigerants are 400 to over 2000 times more powerful as a ‘heater’ than the CO2 coming from a gas stove. Even though heat pumps hardly leak anymore, you don’t want to see a greenhouse gas like that released into the air.
Two cubic meters of gas
That is no longer necessary, because propane appears to be an excellent refrigerant and has a so-called Global Warming Potential (GWP) of only 3: it is three times as powerful as CO2. If you have a heat pump with 1 kilo of propane (a usual amount), you must therefore save 3 kilos of CO2 to compensate for a possible leak. A cubic meter of natural gas produces 1.9 kilograms of CO when burned2 on; with two cubic meters of saved gas you have already more than compensated for that propane.
The heat pump for my living room has saved me 700 cubic meters of gas in a year. If that heat pump had worked with propane (unfortunately, not yet), it would have ‘earned back’ itself 400 times over from a climate point of view in one year. As I have written before, this year I want to install a second heat pump to replace the central heating boiler. With that I want to keep the rest of the house at a reasonable temperature. Of course I now go for a propane variant. That should save me regarding 1000 cubic meters of gas, including shower water. And it therefore pays for itself on one cold winter day.
For old houses
Propane has a second positive property, Patrick Schimmel, specialist in the field of heat pumps, made it clear to me. Propane can very easily heat up central heating water to 70 degrees. This is useful if you have a house, such as a monument, that you cannot insulate properly. In such a house, on cold winter days, with 5 or 10 degrees below zero, you don’t need enough central heating water of 30 to 35 degrees, with which traditional heat pumps work best.
Hybrid heat pumps are now being promoted for those old houses on cold days. When it gets really cold, the gas-fired boiler still takes over. In the Netherlands this would perhaps be necessary 20 percent of the time, the heat pump does the work for the rest of the year. You then save quite a lot of gas, although your gas consumption is the highest on the coldest days.
Exit hybride
But according to Schimmel, that hybrid pump is no longer necessary. The propane heat pump can also supply really hot central heating water if necessary. In that case, the pump may consume slightly more power, but because it only concerns a limited number of days per year, this is manageable. And then you are off the gas in one go. I’m going for it, and will of course keep you informed of my progress.
In his weblog ‘Vincent wants sun’, Vincent Dekker highlights innovations and developments in the field of green energy, close to and far from home. More episodes at Trouw.nl/vincentwilzon. Vincent now also has a podcast, including regarding heat pumps – listen to it via this link or look it up through the known channels.
Read also:
TNO looked it up: the heat pump is sustainable following all
TNO looked at all facets of the heat pump, from the environmental burden during production to the energy gain. And yes, the heat pump is indeed sustainable.
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