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Abstract:
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An alternative to traditional methods of residential
heating and cooling is the heat pump. However,
heat pumps which use the outside air as a
heat source/sink become inefficient during the
periods of highest demand. Another possible heat
source/sink is the earth, several feet below the
surface. The purpose of this paper is to study the
performance of horizontal pipe field, closed-loop,
earth-coupled heat pump systems. The effects on
system performance of variations in pipe field and
soil parameters are discovered through the use of a
finite element computer simulation of the system.
These parametric studies use heating and cooling
loads for Ohio. Total field length and pipe diameter
as well as pipe material and soil thermal
conductivity are varied in several different sets
of simulations. The results of these simulations,
summarized as yearly operating costs, are used to
determine the system configuration which gives the
minimum payback period in a break even economic
analysis. For a 2000 square foot house in the Central
Ohio area, the optimum earth-coupled heat pump
system has a payback of about seven years when
compared with the performance of an air-to-air heat
pump. The simulation methods used in this paper
are easily adapted to systems with other heating/
cooling demands. |
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