Use of River Source Heat Pump for Cooling, Heating of a Green Building

Surface-water heat pumps are achieving ever greater acceptance in china. The operation of water-to-water heat pumps using river water as the heat source and sink has been investigated. The system has been constructed in Sino-Italy green energy laboratory in a campus of shanghai. The system consists of a water-to-water heat pump unit, filters, pumps, flat-plate exchanger and fan coil. It has a rated capacity of 85 kW. The supply water temperature and the return water temperature of the cooling coil were 7 °C and 12 °C, respectively. For the heating coil, they were 45 °C and 40 °C, respectively. An initial analytical study had been carried out before the construction. In this paper, a simplified two-dimensional model is developed to simulate the river water temperature distribution during continuous operation and the model is validated by the experiment data. The simulation results indicate that the impacts of the discharge on entering water temperature and the ecological environment of river are acceptable and the model can be used to analysis feasibility when the surface-water heat pump is considered. This paper also discusses the system performance characteristics, future possibilities for improved efficiency and the adaptability in different regions. The system has been extensively instrumented with an automated data acquisition system to record the operating status of the system components, loop and building interior temperatures, damper status and weather conditions. Mathematic model is also built and validated to analysis the performance of the surface-water heat pump system. Optimum system is got on the basis of the model and performance of the system in different conditions and different regions was analyzed.