Residential and commercial heat pumps

Low GWP and natural evaporator duties.

Heat pumps transform renewable energy from the ambient air, ground or water to useful heat for comfort heating and hot tap water. The most common heat pump technology employs a very efficient refrigeration cycle that typically delivers 3 to 5 times more useful energy than is absorbed in driving the compressor. Some heat pumps are reversible, which means that they can provide heating in winter and cooling in summer.

With a major technological shift underway, replacing synthetic refrigerants with new environmentally friendly natural refrigerants, SWEP works closely with customers and other component suppliers aiming to replace high GWP refrigerants with natural or newly developed low GWP alternatives.

Ground source heat pumps

The ground source heat pump uses the energy stored in the bedrock, surface soil, or water as the heat source for the evaporator. Our brazed plate heat exchangers evaporators have optimized distribution devices to ensure the best possible efficiency in ground source heat pump evaporator duties.

We have a wide range of brazed plate heat exchangers with a long thermal length, which helps to maximize the efficiency of the condensing operation. We also offer double-wall brazed plate heat exchangers for extra safety, for example when the refrigerant circuit heats tap water directly.

Air source heat pumps

In air source heat pumps, outdoor/exhaust air is used as the heat source in an air coil to evaporate the refrigerant. After the compressor, the energy is released into a water circuit that is used to provide comfort heating or to heat tap water, in a similar way to the ground source heat pump condenser.

At low ambient air temperatures, the evaporation temperature of the air coil falls below the freezing point of water. Moisture condensing on the coil freezes, reducing the efficiency of the system. A common way to melt the ice from the air coil is to reverse the system, making the air coil the condenser and the brazed plate heat exchangers the evaporator. Many air-to-water heat pumps are also designed to operate as AC chillers in the summer, again by reversing the system to make the air coil the condenser and the brazed plate heat exchangers evaporator.

Our high-efficiency brazed plate heat exchangers condensers can be equipped with a distribution system to improve performance and reduce the risk of freezing when they are operating as evaporators.

To increase efficiency in air-to-water heat pumps, some compressors are equipped with an economizer port. The economizer function cools the compressor and increases the sub-cooling of the liquid refrigerant. We have a standard economizer selection for Emerson Copeland EVI compressors.