Intermittent experimental study of a vertical ground source heat pump system

In this paper, the intermittent experiment of a vertical ground source heat pump (GSHP) system is investigated and the corresponding geo-temperature variations are studied. The performance of the GSHP system under intermittent operation and the comparisons of different intermittent modes are presented in the paper. The parameters of soil backfill material, air temperature and inlet volume flow rate are also investigated. Experimental results suggest that, due to the recovery in ground thermal energy in intermittent time, the heat exchange rate and the operation performance coefficient (COP) of the heat pump increases, and the compressor power decreases in the successive working. But an insufficient soil recovery time leads to a rapid decline of the performance parameters and the soil temperature. The temperature transports faster under large soil thermal conductivity conditions and the soil temperature decreases more quickly and recovers more slowly with larger inlet flow rate and lower weather temperature for different soil thermal diffusivities. Through multiple nonlinear regression analysis, a curve formula can be fitted to predict the soil temperature variations under intermittent operation of the ground source heat pump in winter, Dalian. It can be found that the soil temperature increases at an exponential function with each factor. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.