Experimental study on ground source heat pump system utilizing groundwater in the heating mode

With the increasingly serious energy and environmental problems, more and more HVAC systems have been in service in World, which have significant influence upon energy and environment. The ground water heat pump (GWHP) system utilizes groundwater with constant temperature to work, so it is hardly influenced by the outside weather conditions, and it does not harm to the environment either. The paper surveys a GWHP system that is running in the heating mode in middle and lower reaches of the ChangJiang River in China. This system is connected in parallel by two ground source heat pump (GSHP) units whose rated heating capacities are 40 kilowatt and 100 kilowatt respectively. In this experiment, we investigate the quantity, quality and temperature of the circulating water in every system, electric consumption and the outside weather conditions and so on. Based on the tested data, we understand the operating characteristic of this system in the heating mode on the whole, and analyze how these parameters influence the coefficient of performance (COP) of the heat pump units. At the same time in this paper we compare the GSHP system with the air-source heat pump (ASHP) system and the boiler heating system in energy saving. All the experimental results can also provide some reference values for the design, manufacture and operation of the GSHP systems further.