Abstract
Increasing energy demand and environmental pollution in United States has been led toward using renewable energy sources over recent decades. Ground-source heat pump systems are one of the promising new energy technologies that have shown rapid increase in usage over the past ten years in the United States. Low efficiency and lack of design guidelines are still the limits of GSHP systems. This paper studies the effects of heat conduction in boreholes used in geothermal heat pump systems. The purpose of this study was to determine the temperature distribution in ground source heat pump system by studying and modeling the ground bore and compare it to proposed design system based on advanced heat transfer and finite elements techniques. Solid Works software, version 2010 is utilized to simulate and calculate each system by using finite elements methods. Findings and Conclusions: The ground loop heat exchanger model was successfully implemented in the Solid Works program. The primary objective of this study is: examine effects of ground-boreholes on closed-loop GSHP systems, develop a design and simulation tool for modeling the performance of a ground Loop Heat Exchanger on closed-loop GSHP systems, and comparing the effects of boreholes different configuration in energy distribution on closed-loop GSHP systems. Simulation result based on the mathematical background which is presented in chapter 2 and 3, have an excellent agreement with the purpose of this thesis and showed the significant energy saving. The solid and hollow cylindrical bores simulate in steady state and transient cases. The results demonstrate around 5.8 % saving in energy consumption by applying a proposed system.