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Geothermal |
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The
History of Geothermal
Heating and Cooling
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Ground source heat pump technology is the
wave of the future, but the concept isn't
new at all. In fact, the idea of the heat
pump was first developed in 1852 by Lord
Kelvin.
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Robert C. Webber, a cellar inventor, was
experimenting with his deep freezer in the
late 1940's. When He dropped the temperature
of the freezer in his basement and touched
the outlet pipe, he almost burned his hand.
He realized heat was being thrown away, so
he ran outlets from his freezer to his
boilers to provided his family with more hot
water than they could use. |
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Webber realized that there was still heat
being wasted, so he piped hot water through
a coil and used a small fan to distribute
heat through the house to save coal. Mr.
Webber was so pleased with the results that
he decided to build a full size heat pump to
generate heat for the entire home. |
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Webber later came up with the idea to pump
heat from underground, where the temperature
doesn't vary much throughout the year. He
placed copper tubing in the ground and ran
Freon gas through the tubing to gather
the ground heat. The gas was condensed in
the cellar, gave off its heat and forced the
expanded gas to go through the ground coil
to pick up another load.. Air was moved by a
fan and distributed into the home. The next
year, Mr. Webber sold his old coal furnace
and relied solely on his new invention to
keep his home warm. |
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In the 40's, the heat pump became known
for its superior efficiency but it wasn't
till the 70's with the Arab oil embargo that
the heat pump became more useful. An
awareness of energy consumption emerged soon
after and launched interest in energy
conservation despite cheap energy prices.
That is when Dr. James Bose, professor at
Oklahoma State University,
came across the heat pump concept in an old
engineering text. |
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Dr. Bose
first used
the idea to help a homeowner whose heat pump
was dumping scalding water into his pool.
Dr. Bose fashioned the heat pump to
circulate the water through the pipes
instead of dumping the water into the pool
and becoming useless.
This was the beginning of the new era in
geothermal systems. Dr. Bose returned to
Oklahoma State University
and began to develop his idea. |
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Since then,
Oklahoma has become the center of ground
source heat pump research and development.
The International Ground Source Heat Pump
Association was formed in Oklahoma, and is
based on the campus of
Oklahoma State University,
where Dr. Bose serves as executive director.
While the same principles which Webber
originally used in his first heat pump are
still used today, the ability to harness
more energy has developed over the time,
making Geothermal Heating and Cooling the
most technological process for heating and
cooling your home or office. |
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