ASHRAE Insights

Heat Pumps at 150

The heat pump concept is 150 years old. One of the earliest known applications of the heat pump cycle was a salt works in the village of Ebensee, Upper Austria, in 1855.

The engineer, Peter Ritter von Rittinger, determined that, in comparison with the direct firing of wood, considerable energy savings could be achieved by supplying the heat for evaporation of water from the brine solution by an open-cycle heat pump, and after vapor compression and condensation, supplying the heat of condensation back to the brine evaporators.

—Source: Paul Britton