Performance evaluation of ground water-source heat pump system with a fresh air pre-conditioner using ground water

From the perspective of cascade utilization of low-grade energy stored in the ground water, a new type of ground water-source heat pump (GWHP) system with a fresh air pre-conditioner using the ground water (abbreviated to GWHP-FAP) is proposed in this paper. For the GWHP-FAP, the ground water will be firstly used to cool/heat the fresh air in a pre-conditioner, and then enters the condenser/evaporator of heat pump (HP) unit for the secondary utilization. Thus the low-grade energy stored in the ground water is maximally used, and the energy consumption of the whole HP system and buildings is reduced. The working principle and the air treatment schemes of the GWHP-FAP are described in detail in this paper. To evaluate the performance of the GWHP-FAP, an office building is taken as an example to apply the system, and six typical cities distributed in three different climatic areas in China, i.e., Beijing, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Changde, Guangzhou, are selected to preliminarily discuss the applicability. The results show that the energy saving performance of the GWHP-FAP is very good. The GWHP-FAP compared with the conventional GWHP, its seasonal energy saving rates are respectively 39.2%, 34.2%, 30.1%, 36.7%, 28.4% and 16.6% for the six typical cities during the cooling mode.