Do you know what type of heater is the most suitable for your home?

The electric heater: operating process

An heater is a device that provides a rapid flow of hot air to a room, through a radiator that generates a source of heat and a fan that heats the air quickly and transmits it by convection to the rest of the room where it is located.

An electric heater is a heater that produces heat energy from electric energy. The most commonly used type of heater is the resistive heater in which the generation of heat is due to the Joule effect. This phenomenon is irreversible, so if an electric current flows through a conductor, part of the kinetic energy of the electrons is transformed into heat due to the collisions they experience with the atoms of the conducting material they flow through, thus raising its temperature. The movement of electrons in a wire is disordered, causing continuous collisions with the atomic nuclei, resulting in a loss of kinetic energy and an increase in the temperature of the material itself.

For this process to occur, it is necessary that the resistance is made of conductive materials (capable of conducting electricity), such as metals (copper or aluminum) and alloys. Since these materials are not "perfect conductors", they exert an electrical resistivity to the flow of current. The energy lost in conduction is dissipated as heat. This resistivity is a disadvantage when it comes to transporting electric energy, but it is desirable when the goal is to generate heat. Other less known electric heaters are thermoelectric heaters, which exchange heat through the Peltier effect. This involves the direct conversion of temperature difference into electric voltage and vice versa.

Heat exchangers

A similar process occurs in heat exchangers, although in this case there is no transformation from one energy source to another, but rather the heat energy is transferred from a gas, usually air from the ventilation system, to another that may be the airflow supplied inside the home. This transfer of heat occurs without the need for the air of the two circuits to mix, thus achieving an energy saving in fuel consumption of nearly 40% in the case of heating or cooling systems.

The advantages of using a heat exchanger are particularly visible in mechanical ventilation systems such as double flow mechanical ventilation, where it is possible to recover 92% of the heat energy from the contaminated air that is extracted from the home. In winter, when the outside temperature is 5°C and the inside is 22°C, clean new air enters from outside at 19°C. In summer, on the contrary, with outside and inside temperatures of 30°C and 21°C respectively, the operation of the thermal exchanger allows the entry of clean air at 22°C.