[post_break]

I wonder if we will ever see them switch to R-1234YF refrigerant. "While R-134a has a Global Warming Potential of 1300, R-1234yf’s GWP is less than 1." The only issue is the higher pressures and the fact that it's somewhat flammable might be why.

I will say, my heat pump dryer, while it has removed some buttons from shirts, has exceeded my expectations on energy usage. It's night and day compared to my toaster I had before.

And possibly this senator got a bad heat pump setup. Sample size of one although the leaking being common is not good.

[c4mpute]

I'm not sure if you will ever see that, the EU is currently trying to band all flourinated hydrocarbons, right in the middle of the 'we all need a heatpump' run. The only "viable" refrigerants after that will be CO_2, propane and ammonia. The "viable" is in scare-quotes because all of them are kind of nasty, CO_2 and ammonia are quite poisonous, CO_2 is inefficient or unusable for the temperature range in question, ammonia is very very corrosive and propane is flammable and explosive. Maybe the US will do the sensible thing and wait it out, meanwhile buying up all the cheap, working heatpumps with traditional refrigerants.

[matheweis]

Is propane that bad? We have propane plumbed throughout houses everywhere here in the us, and while accidents happen they are extremely rare.

I would think that with a closed loop system the risk of a serious problem would be quite low.

[c4mpute]

The pressure is higher in A/C and heat pumps, and you have liquid propane in half of the system. A leak there will quickly create a huge volume of flammable propane-air-mixture at room pressure. The usual plumbing for heating and cooking is at a very low (over-)pressure, 100mbar or something, and your distribution network in town is typically at 1bar. A leak there is less bad and will take some time to fill up space with enough flammable propane-air-mixture to be dangerous, enough time to maybe sound an alarm and evacuate. Generally, a basement full will obliterate the occasional building in any case.

[ricardobayes]

The new, (bio-)propane refigerated ones (R290) are pretty good and work well with the radiators most Europeans have at home. They are reliably capable of emitting up to 75C outlet water. At the moment they are approx. 1.5-2x more expensive, I hope that will come down somewhat. I really hope after a few years a good heatpump will reach cost parity with a good boiler (installation that is).

[ct0]

In your experience, does your heat pump dryer actually dry in a similar amount of time to a conventional electric dryer?

[post_break]

Nope, the toaster had a full load done in like an hour. The heat pump is like 3 hours. But the difference is the heat pump doesn't absolutely destroy my clothes. I'm noticing how much longer my clothes are lasting since switching. It's also so much quieter than the electric.

If you are the type of person who goes "oh crap I need to wash every piece of clothing RIGHT NOW" then heat pump isn't for you because of the time penalty.

[tialaramex]

Specifically, what the heat pump dryer is doing is basically pulling air through the clothing which evaporates some water from the clothes into the air, then cooling the air, which causes water to condense, removing the condensed water and warming the air back up to send through the clothes again. The effect is much closer to the clothes hanging from a line in a garden on a perfect drying day, except it's inside a box.

Whereas the other way to do this is just cook the clothes and the water evaporates, then you dump the warm moist air either outside or into a separate dehumidifier which throws much of the energy away. As you observed this is faster, but most people don't need faster if it's unattended. My dishwasher is slower than washing dishes by hand, but I don't need to sit there watching while it does it so who cares?

[seszett]

My heat pump drier dries a full load (8 kg) of cotton in about 4 hours. My only other experience was a huge, old unit when I lived in North America and I don't really remember if it was faster, but it absolutely destroyed any piece of cloth that wasn't resistant enough, especially anything with elastics.

My current one is as gentle as air drying, no destruction at all.

[detourdog]

I have installed condensate dryers which are actually more efficient than heat pump dryers but take a couple of hours to dry. They don't need to be vented to the outside.

[post_break]

My heat pump dryer doesn't vent and captures the water to a tank or pumps it down the drain.