Performance monitoring and verification of a groundwater source heat pump heating system in a greenhouse

Abstract

The traditional heating of greenhouse is mainly by burning coal and fuel; this has some disadvantages such as low energy efficiency and high carbon dioxide emissions. As a renewable energy, groundwater source heat pump (GWSHP) has been widely concerned, and its heating application in greenhouse has a significant impact on energy saving and emission reduction. This paper introduces the GWSHP, and establishes a heating system combined with an existing fuel oil heater (FOH) in a horticultural greenhouse in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. The GWSHP bore most of the heat load, and the FOH was only used as an auxiliary heat source at low temperature. A heating cycle operation monitoring was carried out from November to May of the following year, and the fuel oil saving rate and energy saving rate of the system were calculated to be 74.4% and 22.3% respectively. The results show that the combined heating of GWSHP and FOH is energy-saving and environmentally friendly, and can be widely used in areas rich in groundwater.