Could make one of these as your compressor.
Water powered air compressor.
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Oh my fucking gosh using a pool pump to power the water powered air compressor.
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You’ve got to much time on your hands man
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Wayyyyyyy too much. You don’t even know 
Side note:
Yes I’m wearing a pig mask. It’s one of those realistic animal masks with a bloody back.
One Halloween I was like fuck yeah a lab coat some arm high leather gloves and a pig mask and I’ll be an insane butcher!!!
It scared a lot of people
Absolutely makes sense to use the condenser heat to preheat your solution, but usually it involves modifying the refrigerant loop which most people are not too excited to do. Just adding a BPHE after compressor discharge or after the primary condenser coil (spending on what you’re trying to preheat) is all that is necessary
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I suppose the next question is at what scale does this make sense? Have to be over 200kbtu to make it worthwhile.
Thoughts?
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I would say that it depends on two things: one is the relative cost of the refrigeration work is. If you’re fabbing a new system, it costs basically nothing. If you’re modifying on your own and are okay with recovering the system, also not a big deal. If you are voiding the warranty on a $100k chiller and paying a specialty HVACR company $200/hr to do it, it’s not worth the effort by any means.
The second factor is how consistently you use that additional heat load. This is not an architecture that makes sense unless you are constantly using that heat and don’t need supplemental heat on top because frankly, heaters are cheap and they don’t use all that much power. The ROI is low if it’s something you use at 20% duty cycle
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