On 17 July 2024, an innovative heat pump was delivered as the centrepiece of the new "Heat Pump Laboratory" for the Climate Engineering course supervised by Professor Uli Jakob, Honorary Professor of Building Technology and Renewable Energies. The introduction and training of the HFT employees was carried out by the Managing Director of IKKE Duisburg, Mr Karsten Beermann, with great enthusiasm and excitement for the technology.
The innovative heat pump is one of 25 units that are part of a nationwide training project sponsored by the Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUV) and run by the Information Center for Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Energy Technology (IKKE). It uses propane as a refrigerant, a natural refrigerant with a very low global warming potential (GWP = 3) and high energy efficiency (more than 3 kWh_th of heat can be generated from 1 kWh_el of electricity). This represents the future of heat pump technologies for the energy transition and decarbonisation of the building and industrial sector.
The aim is to provide students with the latest technology at the highest technical and scientific level in teaching and in the laboratory so that they can make an important contribution to the major challenge of net-zero buildings by 2040 in Baden-Württemberg and 2045 in Germany after successfully completing their studies.
We are very pleased to have a valuable new building block for the university's laboratory equipment, which can certainly benefit not only our own ClimateEngineering students but also neighboring courses (building physics, SENCE).
