How Have HVAC Systems Evolved Over the Years?
The history of HVAC technology is multilayered and captivating, as it involves fields such as thermodynamics and refrigeration and winds back toward devices like heat pumps. Heat pumps have been particularly important in the latter stages of this history. With even just a short account of what made heat pumps possible, you’ll grow to appreciate what these devices can do for you in Canyon Lake, TX.
Fans, Passivity and Dead Ends
Humanity’s quest to manipulate the climate for its own comfort and benefit spans its entire history. Until quite recently, however, attempts to do this — especially on a large scale — have been rather humble.
Fire has been the largest source of indoor heat for most of human history. The first field to make inroads into the technique of indoor cooling was architecture, though it only happened on a smaller scale at first. Back in Ancient Egypt, architects realized that if one built large, wide, and expansive rooms with high ceilings, heat would spread evenly and result in lower temperatures than those prevailing outdoors during the summer.
Much later, during the second century CE, close to the end of the Chinese Han Dynasty, the inventor Ding Huan took a more active step when he built a massive rotary fan with enough power to cool a hall in the Chinese Imperial Palace. People could operate the device using a large hand crank, and an early insight into the principles of evaporative cooling gave it even greater strength.
The Roots of Refrigeration
Much later, starting in the early modern period, a series of European scientists performed some experiments that gradually allowed them to form the principles behind refrigeration. Devices that could showcase those principles followed not far behind.
For example, in 1558, Giambattista Della Porta landed upon a way to use potassium nitrite to swiftly cool ice to far below its freezing point. Then, in 1620, building upon Della Porta’s work and the work of others, Cornelis Drebbel built a giant cooling apparatus and famously used it to chill the Great Hall of Westminster Abbey.
The Scottish physician and chemist William Cullen also created his own refrigeration machine in 1748. However, Cullen’s machine used a pump to create an artificial vacuum over a pool of diethyl ether. This was probably the earliest version of the modern-day heat pump. Two Americans, Oliver Evans and John Gorrie — an engineer and a doctor — also built their own refrigeration machines in 1805 and 1851.
Heat Pumps Get Rolling
To get from refrigeration to heat pumps, inventors and scientists first needed a major insight from the physicist William Thompson (more commonly known as Lord Kelvin), a pioneer in the field of thermodynamics. In 1852, Thompson realized that by reversing the action of refrigeration machines, one could also warm a room. To create heat pumps, all that was still necessary was to combine these two ideas into one device.
This is exactly what the Austrian scientist Peter von Rittinger was able to do in 1856. Von Rittinger’s pump had only industrial uses in Austrian salt mines and marshes, but the path was now open for residential applications.
Englishman John Summer was able to do this when he built the world’s first water-source heat pump. Three years later, the American engineer Robert Webber created a geothermal heat pump and used it to heat and cool his own home. Though these inventions were technically sophisticated and efficient, the wide availability of fossil fuels dampened interest in them.
Now, according to Grand View Research, the HVAC industry has grown into an impressive $17.5 billion giant in the US alone as of 2022. Countless companies offer duct cleaning, HVAC installations, repairs, and maintenance services and many other types of related work.
We are proud to be part of this critical industry. If you need any kind of heating or cooling services, call the experts at Climate Control Heating & Air today. We’re a proud family-owned and operated company that’s been serving the community since 1965.
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