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Yeah, we kind of can. If you place a mug of cold coffee on the the exterior coils of an air conditioner, the coffee will get warmed up a bit.
So i could make a small small steam engine there and run the compressor (at least partially) of the AC from that rotation?
One of the later more modern uses of a heat pump is a heat pump water heater where it takes the Heat out of the air and pumps it into the water.
I installed one and it dropped my power *bill by almost $30 a month even though I went from a 55-gallon hot water heater to an 80-gallon water heater.
I think the issue is finding a use for that heat energy that makes sense. Generating electricity with it doesn't make a lot of sense, but heating water so that you spend less energy heating water does.
That’s great in the summer when you want to be cooling the air inside your house, but not so great in the winter when you want you want to be heating it. I’m hoping some water heater manufacturer figures this out someday and builds a unit capable of switching air sources for the heat, such that the cold output air could be circulated directly into the living space or ducted in a loop to the outside (or attic).
It has the option to go to traditional electric heating if meed be, And if I really wanted to, I could rig up a system where it would vent the colder air outside, and it apparently can work down to nearly 30 degrees farenheight so I could just use outside air exclusively for it if I really wanted to 9-10 months out of the year.
Yes, but the addition of the steam engine would create a load on the air conditioner which would be greater than the power the steam engine could provide.