Theoretical study on the performance of an integrated ground-source heat pump system in a whole year

Being environmental friendly and with the potential of energy-efficiency, ground-source heat pump (GSHP) systems are widely used. However, in southern China, there exists large difference between cooling load in summer and heating load in winter. Thus the increase of soil temperature gradually year-by-year will decrease the COP of the GSHP system. In this paper, the configuration of a vertical dual-function geothermal heat exchanger (GHE) used in an integrated soil cold storage and ground-source heat pump (ISCS&GSHP) system, which charged cold energy to the soil at night and produced chilled water at daytime in summer, and supplied hot water for heating in winter, is presented. This is then followed by reporting the development of the mathematical model for the GHE considering the impact of the coupled heat conduction and groundwater advection on the heat transfer between the GHE and its surrounding soil. The GHE model developed was then integrated with a water-source heat pump and a building energy simulation program together for a whole ISCS&GSHP system. Then the operation performance of the ISCS&GSHP system used for a demonstration building is studied. These simulation results indicated the system transferred 71.505% of the original power consumption at daytime to that at nighttime for the demonstration building. And the net energy exchange in the soil after one-year operation was only 2.28% of the total cold energy charged. Thus we can see the feasibility of the ISCS&GSHP system technically.