Abstract
The Special Issues on “Heat Transfer, Refrigeration and heat Pumps” accepted papers covering a wide range of topics related to heat pumps, thermal energy storage, and low-Global Warming Po-tential (GWP) alternate refrigerants. Heat pumps play a vital role in providing space conditioning and water heating while utilizing the energy of the environment. Since heat pumps use renewable thermal energy from the environs to provide the desired utility, they contribute to the portfolio of technologies that mitigate the carbon footprint. The heat pump may be considered a truly renewable technology if the electricity it uses comes entirely from a renewable source. More accurately, a heat pump is a “low carbon technology”. These perspectives make a heat pump an indispensable option for the future to reduce the nocuous human impact on the environment. More efficient heat pumping technologies are being developed for the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy. Another R&D thrust is heat pumps for cold climates. Hardware components, use of low-Global Warming Potential refrigerants, and identification of systemic inefficiencies are active research areas. This article is a synopsis of the papers submitted to the titled Special Issues.
