Performance of heat pumps with direct expansion in vertical ground heat exchangers in heating mode

• The work focuses on direct expansion ground source heat pumps in heating mode.
• The evaporating process of the refrigerant fluid into boreholes is analyzed.
• A method to design the direct expansion borehole heat exchangers is presented.
• Direct expansion and the common secondary loop heat pumps are compared.
• The comparison is carried out in terms of both borehole length and performance.

Ground source heat pump systems represent an interesting example of renewable energy technology for heating and cooling of buildings. The connection with the ground is usually done by means of a closed loop where a heat-carrier fluid (pure water or a solution of antifreeze and water) flows and, in heating mode, moves heat from ground to refrigerant fluid of heat pump. A new solution is the direct expansion heat pump. In this case, the heat-carrier fluid inside the ground loop is the same refrigerant fluid of heat pump.This paper focuses on the energy performance of direct expansion ground source heat pump with borehole heat exchangers in heating mode, looking at residential building installations. For this purpose, the evaporating process of the refrigerant fluid inside vertical tubes is investigated in order to analyze the influence of the convective heat transfer coefficient on the global heat transfer with the surrounding ground. Then, an analytical model reported in literature for the design of common borehole heat exchangers has been modified for direct expansion systems. Finally, the direct expansion and common ground source heat pumps have been compared in terms of both total borehole length and thermal performance. Results indicate that the direct expansion system has higher energy performance and requires lower total borehole length compared to the common system. However, when the two systems are compared with the same mean fluid evaporating temperature, the overall length of the ground heat exchanger of the direct expansion heat pump is greater than that of the common system.