A Numerical Study on the Performance of Ground Heat Exchanger Buried in Fractured Rock Bodies

Weisong Zhou, Peng Pei, Dingyi Hao and Chen Wang
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Weisong Zhou: College of Mines, Guizhou University, Huaxi District, Guiyang 550025, China
Peng Pei: College of Mines, Guizhou University, Huaxi District, Guiyang 550025, China
Dingyi Hao: Key Laboratory of Deep Coal Resource Mining, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Chen Wang: College of Mines, Guizhou University, Huaxi District, Guiyang 550025, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: The ground source heat pump (GSHP) is receiving increasing attention due to the global trend of energy-saving and emission reduction. However, projects with ground heat exchangers (GHEs) buried in fractured rock bodies are scarce, and the impacts of water flow in fractures on the system performance are short of detailed investigations. In this paper, a three-dimensional model was built to study the temperature distribution underground and the relative performance of heat pumps and GHEs influenced by groundwater flow in fractures. Three factors including fluid flow velocities in fractures, the number of fractures and the distributions of fractures were taken into consideration, a range of indicators including outlet temperature of GHEs, mean temperature of “Energy Storage Rock Body” (ESRB) and heat injection rate per unit length were examined. It was found that the heat injection rate per unit length of a U-pipe in fractured rock body could be up to 78.83% higher than that of a U-pipe in integrated rock. Likewise, the coefficient of performance of cases with fractures was identified to be up to 4.50% higher than the integrated rock case. In addition, differently distributed fractures also have different impacts on the heat transfer efficiency of heat pumps and GHEs.

Keywords: fracture water flow; ground source heat pump; ground heat exchanger (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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