The HPR290 is a small-scale heat pump for air-conditioning buildings, which promise to have major impact on the heat pump market.

On one hand the wish of the German Federal Environment Agency is fulfilled by employing a refrigerant, which is not harmful should it be released into the atmosphere.

On the other hand the end-user benefits from an inexpensive, reliable and robust technology. It can be retrofitted to old buildings without technically experienced staff.

And one more thing: The heat pump HPR290 is extremely silent.

The details:

Natural air ventilated chiller on the facade.

The chiller makes use of the natural air ventilation on the face of building, generated by wind and solar radiation. There is no fan, and therefore from this source no such sound emission. On top of that ice, leaves and twigs cannot interfere improving reliability a lot.

The refrigerant compressor is embedded in the chiller housing and purring with 28 dB. One must listen carefully in order to hear it all. The refrigerant compressor is a well proven mass product, which has a commonly proven working life of more than 40 years. This is a big advantage for the service life, particulary since the compressor is the only movable component in the system.

For the sake of completeness, comparing state of art units with acoustic levels of 45 - 50 dB, this is approx. 3 times the level of a HPR290 unit.

Hermetically closed refrigerant cycle

The HPR290 heat pump is filled with refrigerant, hermetically sealed and tested in the factory. The condenser for the building consists of a 40 m long copper pipe loop wound in coil. This loop is unwound and maybe drawn through a drill hole into the inside of the building or dropped through the roof. There the 5mm pipe can be fixed to a radiator or can be built in the floor, wall, or ceiling. The "invasive" insertion of the condenser, which is part of the hermetically sealed refrigerant cycle, is subject to a patent application.

This approach offers two advantages:

On the one hand the environmentally friendly refrigerant R 290 can be used compared to the split type air conditioning the couplings between the outside and inside unit. Thus, there are no critical leakage spots of the refrigerant. This implies a service free life cycle. No refilling of volatilized refrigerant. The HPR290 unit is running maintenance free.

On the other hand, no technical expertise is required for the installation. It can be a do-it-yourself project.

High Efficiency

The refrigerant is condensing in the copper pipe at constant temperature. Compared to water heating systems there is no temperature difference between inlet and outlet of water. This is of advantage for heating comfort and the COP of the heat pump. The copper pipe has an outer diameter of 5 mm only and is therefore easy to install.