Print Email Facebook Twitter Assessing the performance of ground source heat pumps in neighboring medium-size households Title Assessing the performance of ground source heat pumps in neighboring medium-size households Author Alvarez Gallardo, M.D.P. Contributor Korevaar, G. (mentor) Vardon, P.J. (mentor) Faculty Technical University of Technology Department Chemical Engineering Programme Industrial Ecology Date 2013-09-16 Abstract The Master's programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. This research project was done during an internship of 8 months completed with Royal Dutch Shell within the department of Future Energy Technologies of The Netherlands. It is focused on a case study of a medium size house (2202) situated in The Hague, NL and the neighboring households with the same characteristics along the same street. Homes in the Netherlands are likely to have their heat requirements fulfilled by conventional natural gas systems due to the relatively cheap cost compared to other systems (installation and investment wise) that could have a lower carbon footprint. However, innovative installations could make other more environmentally friendly systems as accessible as conventional systems. The Netherlands as one of the European member states have the goal of reducing CO2 emissions to accomplish their Kyoto targets; however, The Netherlands was not able to meet this target by 3.24% (target of 200.4 megaton CO2-eq). Besides, there is a general lack of financial incentives, making it in many cases an obvious decision to keep and use standard fossil fuel energy systems (both large- and small-scale) regardless of the environmental impact they may have. The building energy consumption sector provides a great opportunity and focus area for trying to reduce even more those emissions, and efforts have been made to introduce into the market more environmentally friendly systems. Until now, exploitation of geothermal shallow energy using a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) has generally been limited to large commercial / industrial units. One reason for this is that the technology used for obtaining the geothermal energy and raising it to an appropriate temperature for the heat requirements of a typical house requires a big space for its installation which in turn proves to be a disruptive and complex process that requires the use of heavy and bulky machinery which immediately translates in a restriction for small homes. Innovations for installations of Ground Source heat pumps are starting to appear in the market, giving the possibility and the opportunity to install those systems in smaller areas, with less disruption and lower investment costs, although some concerns may arise when considering the thermal interference between the boreholes. This project examined the geological characteristics of the case study as determined by a Thermal Response Test (TRT) where parameters such as the thermal conductivity, the thermal resistance and the thermal diffusivity of the ground were obtained. Furthermore, the heat requirements of the test house were calculated with real data obtained during a year between 2012 and 2013 in order to determine the size of the system that would be required for each one of the houses assuming they all have the same demand throughout the year, having a peak demand for a winter day of 16 KW and an average demand of 10 KW in the winter months. Calculations of the length required of every Borehole Heat Exchanger (BHE) and the distance between them were made for the area of each house assuming no thermal interference. The first set of results indicated that a BHE length of 268 m would be needed, and with borehole thermal interference introducing a temperature penalty calculated with an analytical model, the length required increased to 332 m, 68 m more. After this a proposed design of borehole arrangement is suggested for the test house considering the space constraints. Calculations on the Economic and Environmental advantage from Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) compared to a Gas Boiler is done, taking into consideration two scenarios for the GSHP, 1) with a Seasonal Performance Factor (SPF) of 3.5 and 2) with a SPF of 3.0. Domestic gas and electricity price fluctuations over the past years were included, extrapolating this behavior for the years 2015 and 2020. Gas prices are considered to have changed 9% per year given the data from 1996 – 2013. Having extrapolated the prices, calculations are done on running costs and investment cost, to give the payback times when considering current power and gas prices for 2015 and 2020. The current situation (2013) seems the more expensive moment for having the system with a payback time of 24 years however a GSHP system in 2020 with electricity and gas prices following a 9% increase for gas prices would take just 8 years to have the investment back. For the environmental performance the Dutch footprint of power generation is calculated for the average predicted trends of different scenarios in the future for European power generation where GSHP with a SPF of 3.5 in 2020 seems to have the best Carbon Footprint advantage of all with 59% advantage of the compared systems. Recommendations are made in order to come up with connected scenarios of Dutch power and natural gas to have a coherent and timely understanding of GSHP and other renewable systems in the Dutch heating market for the coming years. Further recommendations are made in order to have a clear understanding on all the interrelated factors that have an impact on the efficiency, feasibility and performance of GSHP systems and how this research project could be broadened. Subject ground source heat pumpsrenewable energy To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:dc13c65d-5a00-401a-bec3-5dc38c702967 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights (c) 2013 Alvarez Gallardo, M.D.P. Files PDF MariadelPilarAlvarezGalla ... hesis1.pdf 2.79 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:dc13c65d-5a00-401a-bec3-5dc38c702967/datastream/OBJ/view