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What is a Ground Source Heat Pump?
Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHPs) transfer heat from the ground outside your establishment, to the heating systems you have installed in your home or property; your radiators or Underfloor Heating. If you own a Hot Water Cylinder, the water can also be heated via the GSHP, for your showers, baths and hot-taps.
Ground Source Heat Pumps use buried pipework (Ground Arrays) to extract low-temperature solar energy stored in the ground and compress the energy into higher temperatures. There are 2 ways to install GSHPs, either through boreholes or trenches. Pipes known as 'Collectors' are placed in these boreholes or trenches and begin to absorb energy from external heat sources, such as lakes, rivers and soil.
Ground Source Heat Pumps are the highly efficient and can function at high levels all year round, even in the winter. The GSHP operates differently in the summer compared to the winter. In the summer heat is captured from your property and delivered into the ground source pipework, circulating and running between the ground and your property. In the winter it's the opposite, heat is absorbed from the ground and transferred into your home or property. The Consistency of the underground temperature and constant loop, allows GSHPs to be highly efficient all year round.
How Does a Ground Source Heat Pump Work?
- Thermal transfer fluid (TTF), known as brine (Mixture of water and anti-freeze), loops around the ground arrays buried in and around your property. In both the trench or borehole design, the grounds low-grade heat, constantly warms the mix circulating the buried arrays.
- Once the temperature of the mix is increased, it goes into the evaporator (heat exchanger). Within the evaporator is a refrigerant, the energy absorbed from the ground is transferred into the refrigerant and begins to boil and transition into a gas. The heat exchanger acts like the layers of a cake; never actually mixing the anti-freeze and the water, separating them by plates in the heat exchanger and stacking them on top of each other.
- The gas then goes into the compressor, where the temperature of the refrigerant gas in increased. The heated gas then goes through another heat exchanger, known as the condenser. From here heat is transferred into the heating system installed in your property or home.
- The refrigerant gas having served its purpose, reverts back to being a liquid again. This goes through an expansion valve to lower the pressure and the temperature at the end of the cycle.
- The liquid is then fed back into the system and the whole cycle starts all over again.
Borehole Ground Source Arrays vs Trench Ground Source Arrays
Borehole Collectors
Boreholes arrays are more suited to suburban home areas, where there may not be enough room for the land that trenches require. The Boreholes will be dug to around 60-120m deep, with an additional 6m required for insulation. Boreholes will typically take less time that trenches as they are drilled straight into the ground. Boreholes work in a 4 step process:
- Like most heat pumps, there is a continuous cycle, starting from inside the property.
- Cold fluid is pumped out of the home or property
- The fluid then absorbs heat from the ground through the buried pipework (Geothermal heat)
- The fluid carrying that heat, then transfers it to the heat pump and back into your property
Trench Collectors
Trench arrays tend to be only 1-2 metres deep. They are more suitable for areas and properties with more land at their disposal. There are 2 types of trench collectors; Horizontal collectors and Compact collectors. Horizontal collectors cover about 2 times the size of your home, whereas Compact collectors can be installed horizontally or vertically, meaning they will take up less space than Horizontal collectors. The area required to install a trench system can depend on a number of factors, the soil and moisture in your establishment, the climate, the heat pump efficiency, heating and cooling loads of your home and the depths at which your system would need to be installed. Trench's work in a 4 step process:
- The ground is heat through natural insulation and energy from the sun
- Like other heat pump systems, cold fluid is pumped out of the property and into the buried pipework.
- The fluid absorbs heat from the surface soil and natural underground temperatures.
- From hear the fluid is carried back into your property to successfully use renewable energy to heat your establishment.
