• Caveman
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    10 days ago

    I absolutely love heat pumps. They’re great, massive efficiency and all that. The article says it works in 100-200 °C range which shows a lot of promise but that’s not enough for a lot of use cases that are very energy intensive.

    Clinker, the main CO2 emitter for cement creation and metals such as steel production require >400°C to produce as an example. If people figure out a way to clean up aluminium then we can potentially use a thermite reaction to create steel and there are already alternatives for clinker.

    The real solution is a carbon tax which is going to be economically painful in the short to medium term and with the current economic situation there’s not a lot of political will.

    Heat pumps are a game changer for residential and low-temp industrial heat. Shit’s going badly right now in the grand scheme of things but at least we’re heading in the right direction.