New Heat Pump Will Last 10,000 Years 191
Posted
by
timothy
from the maytag-man-will-be-dust dept.
from the maytag-man-will-be-dust dept.
formaggio writes "Most heat pumps maintain an average useful life of 10-20 years, but researchers at the University of Stavanger in Norway (USN) and the University of Oslo believe that they have developed a new heat pump that will last up to 10,000 years."
10,000 (Score:5, Informative)
The miniature pumps will just continue to pump. We stick fans on them, and they must be replaced, but the heat pump itself will stay and be equally effective after 10 000 years," Bording continues.
Misleading headline, both on this blog post and on the blog post that this blog post cites.
Solid state heat pump - Peltier Junction?? (Score:4, Informative)
Solid state heat pumps exist already. It is called Peltier Junction. They are not used because their efficiency is bad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltier_effect
The COP of current commercial thermoelectric refrigerators ranges from 0.3 to 0.6, only about one-sixth the value of traditional vapor-compression refrigerators
So what is the break through in the little heat pumps?? TFA is completely uninformative on that. It doesn't even specify efficiency of the heat pump.
PS. I've had an open loop heat pump for the last decade, and so far it didn't require "frequent inspection" or "maintenance" as TFA says it does. It comes with 20 year warranty. It is basically just like a larger version of a fridge. The only maintenance I can envision is simply cleaning the heat exchanger once in a while.
Re:Poor estimation (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than that.
Colt's M-16 was designed around a newer, cleaner burining rod type powder compared to the older ball type powders; but it also included a chrome barrel and integral cleaning kit in the stock. It was advertised as 'needing a minimal amount of cleaning'
The Army testing team, being hostile to the idea of switching away from a .30 caliber rifle, had sabotoged Colt's acceptance trials. When McNamara found out, he basically ordered the switch to the M16, but they continued to sabotoge the effort, taking Stoner's 'self cleaning' comments to not issue cleaning kits even as they deleted the chromed barrel and substituted dirtier ammo.
Basically, the M-16A1 was mostly just returning to Colt's original specifications.