I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 103 - 102 Ground Source Heat Pump Technology

According to the law of conservation of energy, generating heat with 1 kW·h of electricity cannot possibly exceed 1 kW·h, but if ground-source heat pump technology is used, it can bring about 4 kW·h of heat or cold with 1 kW·h of electricity.

At first glance, this seems almost magical, like some pseudoscience trickery, but in fact, this is a tangible technology, and devices that achieve this level of efficiency are ubiquitous in our lives, with air conditioners being the most representative.

In thermodynamics, the ratio of energy conversion efficiency is called the coefficient of performance (COP).

Among these, electric heaters, or directly electrically heating devices, have the lowest efficiency, roughly only about 60%, meaning they consume 1 kW·h of electrical energy to produce 0.6 kW·h of heat.

Apart from electric heating, the efficiency of energy boilers varies depending on the fuel, with natural gas and oil boilers having an efficiency of about 0.9, while coal only achieves 0.6.

In contrast, electric boilers have quite a high efficiency, reaching about 0.95, like using electricity directly in an oven, which is not as good as using a kettle to boil water.

Achieving an efficiency of 0.9 is already very high, as the law of conservation of energy limits it to never reaching 1.

However, the efficiency of an air conditioner in cooling mode can exceed 3.

This does not violate the law of conservation of energy because air conditioners use a refrigerant to transfer the indoor heat outside; the heat it moves is not generated by the air conditioner itself but is pre-existing, merely transported by the unit.

In fact, in Flame Country, air conditioners with an efficiency below 2.6~2.8 are not allowed to be sold, and only those above 3.2 can be considered true air conditioners.

Understanding this, it’s not surprising that ground-source heat pumps can achieve an efficiency of 4.

As for why air conditioners and ground-source heat pumps can achieve such high efficiency, it is because they include a series of equipment such as compressors, evaporators, condensers, and expansion valves, which are far more complex than devices like boilers.

But precisely because of this complex set of equipment, a substantial amount of energy is brought in.

Using 1 kW·h of electricity to produce 4 kW·h of heat is clearly more energy output than input.

Seeing this data, a thought involuntarily flashed in Chen Xin’s mind. He took out a piece of paper and a pencil, planning to think it over.

"Using 1 kW·h of electricity to bring about 4 kW·h of heat, even if only half of the heat is used for heating, it’s still more profitable than directly using an electric heater or boiler..." Chen Xin doodled on the paper, not intending to draw anything specific, just using it as a tool to aid his thoughts: "If half of the heat is used for heating and the remaining half is recovered for electricity generation..."

What was drawn on the paper wasn’t important; what mattered was what was swirling in Chen Xin’s mind, and as he pondered, a light bulb went off in his mind! freewēbnoveℓ.com

"Even if the efficiency is low, as long as it can reach a coefficient of performance of 0.6, this system can sustain itself!" Chen Xin slapped the table with excitement.

This is not some kind of mythical perpetual motion machine; it’s just a common industrial process of waste heat recovery for power generation, though Chen Xin’s method of recovering waste heat is abundant enough to make the system self-sustaining.

Achieving this isn’t difficult because once the refrigerant brings the heat from the layers of the earth, it needs to evaporate and release a large amount of heat. During this process, whether Chen Xin plans to use it for boiling water or generating electricity through thermal differences, it can produce enough electricity to keep the system running while still supplying enough heat for heating.

Regarding the need to drill into the ground to implement this system, Chen Xin is living in an underground shelter, with more than 200 meters of earth overhead, equivalent to being underground by 200 meters.

This can be seen from the fact that even when the external temperature is -34°C, the temperature in Chen Xin’s shelter remains at 7°C. If it weren’t for the ventilation system continuously causing some heat loss, the temperature in the shelter could be even higher.

So Chen Xin doesn’t need to go through much trouble utilizing geothermal heat; he just needs to bury the pipes in the ground, even if it’s directly in the soil of his greenhouse.

Although doing so may lower the ground temperature in the planting greenhouse, affecting crop growth.

Chen Xin can completely build the system in the ground layer of the greenhouse and then use system upgrades to re-plan, embedding the pipes deeper into the ground.

The entire shelter of Chen Xin is encased in thick reinforced concrete and insulated layers, and if Chen Xin wants to bury the pipes into the real ground, he needs to penetrate at least 40 centimeters of reinforced concrete.

If it weren’t for the system’s assistance, Chen Xin would simply abandon this idea.

But with the system, all Chen Xin needs to do is upgrade with it.

By now, Chen Xin fully understands the terror of this system; although it only has a simple upgrade function, lacking the variety of gimmicks and exchanges of other systems, just this simple feature, when used right, can unleash tremendous potential.

The system indeed cannot create something from nothing; there must be basic materials as a foundation, but the upgrades it performs are still very powerful.

Chen Xin is a novelist, and novelists are monsters with their heads in black holes. Plus, he enjoys pondering, so he once tried to analyze the principles behind system upgrades.

However, the conclusion was that the system’s upgrades are far from the imagined step-by-step unlocking of high technology.

Instead, it is a more terrifying concept upgrade.

To give the simplest example, if the system was about technological upgrades, if Chen Xin had a wooden stick, he could choose to process it into a spear, club, sword, or bow and arrow, and in subsequent upgrades, add new materials to replace and transform it into something more advanced.

All of this should have a traceable lineage and rules to follow, as technology must progress with prerequisite technologies.

However, even though the system’s upgrade appears similar on the surface, it is far more terrifying because according to the system-embedded information state concept blur function, Chen Xin concluded that the system’s so-called upgrade is enhancing an object conceptually and informationally.

Since this advanced civilization can modify the information contained in an object to make it seem reasonable, it can naturally also modify the information to add more concepts, and Chen Xin’s choice of upgrade plan is precisely the process of infusing these concepts.

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