Europe
News and information from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don't question the statehood of Israel.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in other communities.
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
- Always provide context with posts: Don't post uncontextualized images or videos, and don't start discussions without giving some context first.
(This list may get expanded as necessary.)
Posts that link to the following sources will be removed
- on any topic: Al Mayadeen, brusselssignal:eu, citjourno:com, europesays:com, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Fox, GB News, geo-trends:eu, news-pravda:com, OAN, RT, sociable:co, any AI slop sites (when in doubt please look for a credible imprint/about page), change:org (for privacy reasons), archive:is,ph,today (their JS DDoS websites)
- on Middle-East topics: Al Jazeera
- on Hungary: Euronews
Unless they're the only sources, please also avoid The Sun, Daily Mail, any "thinktank" type organization, and non-Lemmy social media (incl. Substack). Don't link to Twitter directly, instead use xcancel.com. For Reddit, use old:reddit:com
(Lists may get expanded as necessary.)
Ban lengths, etc.
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 7 or 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the admin that applied the rule (check modlog first to find who was it.)
view the rest of the comments
That's basically two units in one or how does it work?
AC is a heatpump. pumping heat from inside to outside. "Heatpump" is also a heatpump. pumping from outside in. The only difference is fluid flow direction.
Hence only thing needed to turn one to other is 4 way valve changing the flow direction/order of refrigerant.
These days atleast in Europe, good luck finding "heat pump", that doesn't have 4 way selector valve. Early on there was single direction heat pumps and cooling was extra feature only on upmarket models. These days it is "oh right it also has cooling, handy". The valve is not that expensive, so it is pretty standard by now.
And modern ACโs can heat as well.
Not sure if I get it entirely. With classical heatpump (and by this I mean the one for heating) the external unit expands the refrigerant, so it absorbs the heat from air. If it was used for AC, then it should compress it instead. But if I understand properly (doubt) 4 way valve, I would require an unit that either compress it outside or expands it inside.
No, it only needs to do one and you flow it in reverse.
The pump compresses the gas, this increases its temperature, but maintains it as a gas. The liquid goes by a coil and a fan blows on it. The air blowing on there transfers heat from the gas to the air. The air blown by this fan is hot, as it contains the heat that was removed from the gas. Due to the temperature drop the gas condenses into a liquid. The liquid goes by a one way valve where it's allowed to expand, this decreases the temperature but it remains a liquid. The liquid goes by a coil, similar to the other one, but this time the fan transfers heat from the air into the liquid and converts it back into a gas while blowing cold air.
Now if you think of this as 3 different pieces, a central one with the pump and expansion valve, and two coils it's easy to understand that if you just connect the coils in reverse the one that was heating now cools and vice versa. So all you need is to have the central piece be connected to a valve that allows it to switch which coils connect to which side and you're done.
4 way valve is 4 way exactly so the compressor can essentially switch sides on the cycle. It also shifts around where the expansion valve is located in cycle. thus switching the tasks of the inside and outside radiators/heatexchangers.
A heatpump to heat the home (which is commonly referred to as a heatpump) and a heatpump to cool the home (which is commonly referred to as airconditioning) are effectively the same thing but run in reverse.
All a heatpump does is move heat from one place to another. For heating you move heat from the outside to the inside, and for cooling you move it in reverse.
Airconditioners (which are just heatpumps) often have a valve which allow you to reverse the flow. That is why most air conditioners can be used for both heating and cooling without the need for any significant amount of extra hardware.
As a bonus, because a heatpump moves heat rather than generating heat, they heat the home by 4-6 kWh of heat energy for 1 kWh of electricity they consume. (This ratio is the referred to as the COP-value, and you can look it up for all ACs. They usually list separate COP values for heating and cooling)
This makes them significantly cheaper to run than gas boilers, even if gas is significantly cheaper per kWh than electricity is.