Performance and Sustainability of District-Scale Ground Coupled Heat Pump Systems

This study proposes a solution to the problem of maintaining the performance and sustainability of district-scale, cooling-dominated ground coupled heat pump (GCHP) systems. These systems tend to overheat because heat dissipates slowly in relation to the size of the borefields. To demonstrate this problem, a 2000-borehole field is considered at a district-scale GCHP system in the Upper Midwest, US. The borefield’s ground and fluid temperature responses to its design heating and cooling loads are simulated using computational fluid dynamics implemented by applying the finite volume method. The ground temperature is predicted by applying the thermal loads uniformly over the borefield and simulating heat dissipation to the surrounding geology through conduction coupled with advection due to groundwater flow. The results show that a significant energy imbalance will develop in the ground after the first few years of GCHP operation, even with high rates of groundwater flow. The model presented in this study predicts that the temperature at the center of the borefield will reach 18 °C after 5 years and approximately 50 °C after 20 years of operation in the absence of any mitigation strategies. The fluid temperature in the boreholes is then simulated using a single borehole model to estimate the heat pump coefficient of performance, which decreases as the modeled system heats up. To balance the energy inputs/outputs to the ground—thus maintaining the system’s performance—an operating scheme utilizing cold-water circulation during the winter is evaluated. Under the simulated conditions, this mitigation strategy carries the excess energy out of the borefield. Therefore, the proposed mitigation strategy may be a viable measure to sustaining the operating efficiency of cooling-dominated, district-scale borefields in climates with cold winters.