Unitary Water-Source Heat Pumps for Geothermal Applications: Availability, Performance and Design

Abstract

Residential size water source heat pumps that may be used for space heating in conjunction with geothermal energy are marketed by a large number of companies in the U.S. These units however, are recommended for operation in only a portion of the geothermal resource temperature range for which space heating with heat pumps and geothermal resources has been shown to be applicable. Calculations reveal that good performance and good use of the geothermal resource can be obtained for the whole range of geothermal resource temperatures, for which this types of system has been indicated, when the heat pump unit is redesigned to match the prevailing resource temperature and have an acceptable temperature drop. The performance and required fluid flow rate values summarized here allow a better evaluation of the true potential for geothermal space heating using residential size heat pumps than do the values reported for present off the shelf heat pump units.