Feasibility study of a ground source heat pump system for heating and cooling of an industrial building

The proposed analysis is focused on the project and the technical and economical evaluation of a ground source heat pump system for heating and cooling an industrial building. The project of the plant consists of two phases: the design of the heating and cooling system and the design of the geothermal probes field. The optimization of the system has been the target of the entire design process. The proposed solution is an hybrid system: two ground source heat pumps, coupled with a back-up condensing boiler. A closed loop with single U probes has been selected as the best solution for the geothermal plant. The designed plant has been compared with a conventional solution, composed by a condensing boiler and an air-water heat pump. The comparison has been made considering the economic and the environmental impact of the two solutions, using a multi-criteria approach which evaluate the CO2 emissions, the primary energy consumption and the percentage of renewable energy use. The results indicate that the conventional plant is the best solution by the economic point of view, instead, the ground source heat pump coupled with a condensation boiler is clearly the environmental friendly solution.