Assessment of Geothermal Heat Pump Heating Systems in Coyhaique City, Chilean Patagonia

Abstract

Coyhaique is the capital city of the Aysén region, Chilean Patagonia. The city, one of the most polluted in the country, was classified as a saturated area with respect to particulate matter by August 2012. The main source of pollution is the burning of firewood for heating purposes. Therefore, we propose Geothermal Heat Pumps (GHPs) as a renewable and environmentally friendly choice for heating.
We carried out a technical and economic assessment of the GHPs functioning for 9 types of houses. We considered a horizontal closed loop system as the geothermal collector. The Coefficient of Performance (COP) based on the temperature at 1.45m depth is 3.97.
The operational cost of GHPs in Coyhaique is the lowest, among the options analyzed in this work. Therefore, GHPs are a good option for reducing the particulate matter emissions in Coyhaique. However, the high initial investment for GHPs is an economical barrier, which must be reduced to encourage the introduction of the technology.