Operational Energy Saving Potential of Thermal Effluent Source Heat Pump System for Greenhouse Heating in Jeju

Massive thermal effluent energy from power plant is mostly released to the sea, and only a little is used for fishing culture and agriculture in South Korea. The thermal effluent from the power plant can be an efficient heat source of the heat pump system to provide heating energy for the greenhouse, but energy loss and pump power by long distance pipeline installation from a power plant to the greenhouse should be considered. In this paper, an operational energy saving potential of a thermal effluent source heat pump system for the greenhouse heating was investigated. For the estimation of thermal load, three cases of greenhouse were categorized, and the thermal performance and operating energy consumption during the heating season were compared with those of a conventional ground source heat pump (GSHP) system. The model for heat pump system was newly derived to estimate the energy performance of the proposed system, and then detailed simulations for each system under three cases of greenhouse were conducted. The results showed that the operational energy of the proposed system can be saved by 17-20% than that of the conventional GSHP system.