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New Heat Pump Will Last 10,000 Years
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."
They guy at Best Buy will still try to sell you the extended warranty too!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
An article about itty bitty peltiers? Do they come in white?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
...I'm sure they'll try to sell me a prolonged warranty anyway!!
Or human shaped. Cue Replicator jokes in...three, two, one. (Seriously, that's what the photo in TFA reminded me of.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is like the bridges built in the '60s that were supposed to last over a hundred years, but need to be replaced now. By the time they have to be replaced, the companies manufacturing them will simply no longer exist to sue and will have moved on to Carbon Fiber (the next 100+ year technology that won't last nearly 100 years).
Soooo this looks like a thermocouple or peltier element. What's new?
I just want a radiator belt that will last a thousand years.
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.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
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.
That's nice, but we have no shortage of stuff that lasts "up to" millions of years.
Just get a demon to sort more and less energetic particles into separate sides of a wall. The only waste is that you have to destroy a huge amount information to offset the order you're creating.
That's nothing! I have a tuna sandwich that will last up to 1 billion years! (Your pick of long or short scale.) I absolutely guarantee that it will last no longer than that!
...
When will we stop giving an upper bound on the time until something will break when we should be giving a (preferably maximal) lower bound?
(Still mighty cool work of the University of Oslo.)
That's an annoying claim to make, even if they've done accelerated aging tests. The only human construct that's been proven to stay usable after 10,000 years is stone artifacts, such as blocks and arrowheads. Over a hundred centuries, there's plenty of chances for some unexpected failure mode to pop up.
I misread the title as saying a heart pump would last 10,000 years. Great, that'd be the only thing left :)
not more inhabitant spam. Normally junk mail is addressed to resident . I blame those damn alien direct-marketroids with their faulty understanding of the English as she is spoke.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Right ...
If I recall correctly, a CD was supposed to last for a hundred years. Maybe the first batch ever will even make a good run, but once it settles into mass production and the competition to lower the price warms up, you can pretty much squash the hope. And when you hit the period when the product is already superseded by the next generation, but still selling by inertia, you will be lucky if it still works by the time you get home with it. A 10k years? Whatever, i'd rather buy the one that promises 10 years.
FCKGW 09F9 42
In Tchernobyl and probably in Fukushima, they have heat sources which will last for a very long time. Maybe this heat pump could be of use there...
It doesn't take a genius to see that the extremely small form-factor would be especially prone to dust.
The 10,000 year number probably requires some idiotic assumption like "as long as it remains dust free".
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I look forwards to the results from the 10000 years of testing to verify this (I plan to live forever) .
Why does it seem like every advancement that could actually improve the human existence is "5 to 10 years away" yet they can produce a new [insert company name here] phone every year?
http://xkcd.com/678/
They mentioned that they're green because the don't use freon. Great. Most compressor based heat pumps have used something greener than freon for years. AFIAK, compressor based heat pumps are still WAY more efficient than a peltier. So if you replace a cooling gas with a 400% increase in power usage... You lose?
Small peltiers will last a long time, because they aren't as affected by thermal expansion as their larger brethren. . They still have horrible efficiency though.
1. how does it work? 2. where is the motor? 3. it's generally either the motor that dies, or the heat-sink fins on the coils that crust over with deposits and growths, abd cause it to lose effieciency. does this unit work without a motor? does it not need a heat sink? 4. where is it getting the power needed to cause the heat to flow against the thermal gradient to pump it into or out of the transfer medium that goes to the air exchanger? is it efficient at doing this? 5. who cares how long it lasts if it's less efficient?
"That's nice. What's the name of that song?"
"I call it 'Suck My Heat Pump'."
Why not?
Goering?
Oh wait...
Our technical civilization won't really be "advanced" in my view unless we can and do make things that last a long, long time. What technology exists that is still working or workable after centuries or millenia? I think there are a few telescopes over 100 years old that are still in use. Pretty impressive. Older than that, and what?... Stone knives? I heard irrigation ditches and terraces have worked for 100s or thousands of years, but these are pretty static, and have required intensive labor to keep them operating. What *could* we make that would still be operable and interesting in, say 500 years?
Computers obey me.
AFAIK, freon and many other of the refrigerants are no more toxic than water... you CAN drown in them, and that is a hazard in enclosed spaces. And some of the refrigerants were ozone depleters, but the new stuff isn't.
What technology exists that is still working or workable after centuries or millenia?
Roads? Maybe not the way we build them now, but the ancients sure knew how to build 'em. They might be buried, but all you do is uncover it and you've got the same road as a few thousand years ago.
it will be ready in 5 to 10 years...along with fusion and AI.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd be real interested in a heat pump that can last a long time. I just spent about $7000 replacing one that broke, though it was marketed under its more common name: An air conditioner.
Basically any house A/C is a large mechanical heat pump. It has two radiators for heat transfer, and a compressor that it uses to force heat to one of them, which of course makes the other one cool.
Useful, and fairly necessary devices in hot climates. However lifespan is a problem. Not only does their efficiency drop with time but they are only going to last a few decades at best. They are usually warranty'd for 10 years, getting 20 years is fairly realistic, but 30 or more is mostly luck. Eventually the compressor will fail, or the coils will spring a leak or whatever.
So why do we use something mechanical? Because as the parent pointed out, they are efficient. A good compressor combined with large radiators means you can get good efficiency in terms of moving heat.
Believe me, those of us that live in hot climates would love heat pumps that last forever. However they have to be efficient too. Buying an A/C is only half the cost, the other half is running it. Even if you didn't care, the federal government cares on your behalf. They mandate minimum efficiency levels for A/Cs sold.
The Germans, last century, certainly did. Ask the British.
They'll put it on the market. And in 6 months they'll announce that its now available in white. And everyone will trade in their old ones.
Have gnu, will travel.
I wonder what the electrical consumption is? The main reason we didn't go with a heat pump on my new house is that the pumps would draw too much power from the solar system.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
There are a few examples of natural heat pumps that have lasted perhaps thousands of years, such as geysers with large sinter (deposited silica) cones, such as Lone Star Geyser or Castle Geyser (Wikipedia claims there is evidence that the Castle Geyser is a mere thousand years old rather than the assumed 5k to 15k years, but that's a lot of sinter for a thousand years).
These geysers transfer heat from superheated hydrothermal networks underground (which in turn are heated by residual heat from the Yellowstone hot spot) to atmospheric conditions. In the process, they do work, occasionally creating jets of water that rise to fair heights (up to 90 feet for Castle, 40 feet for Lone Star).
As I understand it, there are external factors such as resupply of water to the system and the occasional earthquake to stir up the innards which are necessary to keep these geysers active.
Any chance this will be used by the folks at The Long Now Foundation?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I still don't quite understand how it could last for 10,000 years or for that matter even 1000 years. I mean besides a few stone structures with essentially no moving parts has anything man made lasted 10,000 years in working order (I'm not counting arrow heads or clovis stones)
Or did I entirely miss the point?
The bridges probably would last 100 years if properly maintained.
The problem is with all the tax cutting, where is no longer the money to do maintenance. I am from Michigan and the governor (John Engler) refused to properly fund taking care of the infrastructure. To him it was more important to reduce the taxes. He got the nickname "Pothole John".
FTFA:
Thermoelectric materials can also be used to generate electricity. Today, this is done on the moon. Electricity is used in everything from space stations to cars there.
--
WTF? Since when is there a space station on the moon. The article sources from Physorg.com, a scientology front organisation, and I would doubt the credibility of the entire article based on that and the quote above.
It's too expensive to pump in outside air down here. So we just remove CO2 freshen it up a little and pump it back in. Just thought you should know that.
--GLaDos, Portal 2
Good to see the future will have such reliable air systems now all we need are automated cake makers and portal guns to match that longevity.
clocks etc work quite frequently even if they're old.
and a lot of stuff, metal stuff, will last forever if you don't use them.
maybe you should go to a museum - or an old farmstead. or an antiquities store. old guns work too.
we could make plenty of stuff that would be operable for five centuries, provided that it doesn't get destroyed in the meantime. interesting though, that's much harder, like it is much harder to make something that is interesting even just today.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...it still won't warm the whole house...
I hope they use t3h Monsta Kab3l.
Athy, athier, athiest.
It could be used for great evil as well as great good !
Which ancient road have you driven on recently? If you can't actually use them today, do you think they may have grossly overspent on them then?
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
> New Heat Pump Will Last 10,000 Years
Still not long enough for use in a nuclear waste facility !!
A friend of mine here in Sweden rebuilt his house such that he uses geothermal for heating, with a 15-year plan for economy. In the 4 years he's had it, he's about halfway to recouping his investment already, thanks to Sweden having had normal winters(on a geological timescale, not the unusually mild winters we've had since the mid-80's) again the last two years. Another thing he's working on now is building a Stirling engine, coupled to the geothermal, to generate electricity. It'll be roughly the size of an ordinary home washing machine, and can provide about 1kW. He won't be completely offgrid, but he can severely reduce the amount of power he needs from the grid. Couple that with using LED's and other low-energy lighting, using energy efficient computers etc, he and his family still live very comfortably, in fact, more so than many others. I wish I could do that with my apartment actually.
You do know that skyscrapers don't stand because of concrete right? They only became possible after we managed to make strong enough steel. Remember those posters with the construction workers sitting on those steel beams?
If you are talking about R-22 that has been way longer than 5 years. I don't know how long it has been used for but it has been at least 20 years ago. What's more it isn't as though they just suddenly cut it off. Just last year is when you couldn't get new equipment with R-22. It can still be produced for use with existing equipment. It'll be allowed to be produced until 2020. Even then it can still be used, it just can't be produced so the supply will slowly dwindle.
That isn't a very fast legislation out of existence. I bought a new unit not because my old one was R-22, I could easily get it recharged, but because it would cost too much to be worth repairing my old one.
The basic idea of solid state electric heat pumps was used in production by the Soviets for cooling home refrigerators some years ago. Of course those 'coolers' were relatively large, but they worked.