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Thermodynamic heat pump cycles or refrigeration cycles are the conceptual and mathematical models for heat pump, air conditioning and refrigeration systems. [1] A heat pump is a mechanical system that transmits heat from one location (the "source") at a certain temperature to another location (the "sink" or "heat sink") at a higher temperature. [2]
The terms sensible heat and latent heat refer to energy transferred between a body and its surroundings, defined by the occurrence or non-occurrence of temperature change; they depend on the properties of the body. Sensible heat is sensed or felt in a process as a change in the body's temperature.
Heat exchangers are widely used in refrigeration, air conditioning, space heating, power generation, and chemical processing. One common example of a heat exchanger is a car's radiator, in which the hot coolant fluid is cooled by the flow of air over the radiator's surface.
In systems involving heat transfer, a condenser is a heat exchanger used to condense a gaseous substance into a liquid state through cooling. In doing so, the latent heat is released by the substance and transferred to the surrounding environment. Condensers are used for efficient heat rejection in many industrial systems.
In mathematics and physics, the heat equation is a certain partial differential equation. The theory of the heat equation was first developed by Joseph Fourier in 1822 for the purpose of modeling how a quantity such as heat diffuses through a given region. Since then, the heat equation and its variants have been found to be fundamental in many ...
Quantity (common name/s) (Common) symbol/s Defining equation SI unit Dimension Temperature gradient: No standard symbol K⋅m −1: ΘL −1: Thermal conduction rate, thermal current, thermal/heat flux, thermal power transfer
The Bowen ratio is calculated by the equation: =, where is sensible heating and is latent heating. In this context, when the magnitude of is less than one, a greater proportion of the available energy at the surface is passed to the atmosphere as latent heat than as sensible heat, and the converse is true for values of greater than one.
Two primary classes of thermodynamic cycles are power cycles and heat pump cycles. Power cycles are cycles which convert some heat input into a mechanical work output, while heat pump cycles transfer heat from low to high temperatures by using mechanical work as the input. Cycles composed entirely of quasistatic processes can operate as power ...