Geoclimatic energy project : final report
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The concept of Geoclimatic energy is intended as an improvement to conventional geothermal heat pumps by not only providing a home’s heating and cooling requirements, but to also generate surplus electricity from seasonal temperature variations. A modified heat pump cycle has been designed which can serve the function of a geothermal heat pump, while simultaneously generating a small surplus of electricity of approximately 2 kW. The modified heat pump cycle can take the place of a conventional geothermal heat pump, and can deliver approximately 30 kW of space heating, 130 kW of water heating and 13 kW of air conditioning capacity. The designed cycle has an efficiency of 154% in the summer and 519% in the winter. A cornerstone to this modified heat pump cycle is utilizing an aquifer thermal storage system. It has been demonstrated that the aquifer thermal storage system will be effective at storing thermal energy for long periods of time and with small thermal losses. With the two wells set to a spacing of 50 (m), there is an increase in temperature at the other well of only 0.89°C, which was deemed to be an acceptable temperature increase. It was also shown that the temperature in the water stored in the hot well would fall by not more than 10°C of the course of a six month storage period, suggesting a thermal storage efficiency of 83.33%.