Growth of the Use of Geothermal Heat Pumps in China

Abstract

Although Chinese researchers had studied and tested heat pumps since the 1960s, there were no practical applications at that time due to the lack of electric power even for civil lighting. Around the period entering the 21st Century, by learning from world’s experience, geothermal heat pumps (GHP) started to be used experimentally in the country. In the recent 5 years, based on their superiority for saving energy and reducing CO2 emission, the GHP is supported and proposed by governments and leaderships to gain flying growth. The total area of GHP engineering application was 7.67 million m2 in 2004 but reached 20.35 million m2 in 2006, and its annual increase was about 20 million m2 in following years. Installed capacity grew from 383MWt in 2004 to 5,210MWt in 2009. It has increased by more than 10 times during the past 5 years. A batch of momentous GHP projects gained financial support from the Ministry of Construction and Ministry of Finance. A series of GHP applications were installed in many game halls and stadiums for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. China has drawn up the National Standard for GHP application. Manufacturers of heat pumps and auxiliary attachments have been growing. Design and construction companies have been going up as nuclear fission. In universities and institutes, various research projects have been undertaken continuously, such as further raising COP, trials of a high temperature heat pump and absorption-type heat pump, attempting multisource combination (e.g. GHP + solar) etc.