Effect of reference state on the performance of energy and exergy evaluation of geothermal district heating systems: Balcova example

In this paper, we undertake a parametric study to investigate how varying reference temperature from 0 to 25 °C will affect the energy and exergy efficiencies of the Balcova geothermal district heating system (BGDHS) and develop two significant correlations (with a correlation coefficient of 0.99) that can be used for predicting the efficiencies. The exergy losses in the overall BGDHS are quantified and illustrated using exergy flow diagram particularly for a reference temperature of 11.4 °C for comparison purposes. This reference temperature is taken as an average value of the ambient temperatures measured during the past 5 years for the day of 2nd January to reflect the actual situation. The results show that the exergy losses within the system occur mainly due to the losses in pumps, heat exchangers, reinjection sections of the geothermal water back into reservoir and pipeline, and account for 1.75%, 8.84%, 14.20%, and 28.69%, respectively. In addition, we study energy and exergy efficiencies to determine the possibilities to improve the system, and energy and exergy efficiencies of the system are found to be 42.36% and 46.55%, respectively, for 2nd January 2004.