Explain why heat pumps do not work as well in very cold

Solution  23CQ

Step-by-step solution

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A heat pump is a device that heats a system by supplying heat from the surroundings, making the surroundings cooler. In order for this process to occur, a work must be supplied to the system, enabling the system to effectively take heat from a lower temperature and heat up a space at a higher temperature.

When the temperature of the surrounding in which a heat pump should work is very low, the amount of work to be given to the machine to transfer the same amount of heat increases, or in other words, for the same input, the amount of heating occurring decreases as the temperature between the system and the surrounding increases (where the temperature of surroundings become very less).

As a result, heat pumps don’t work well in colder environments as they do in milder ones.