Geothermal heat pump or ground source heat pump (GSHP) is a central heating and cooling system that pumps heat to and from the ground. Geothermal heat pumps utilize heat naturally generated below the earth’s surface for heating and cooling residential and commercial complexes. These heat pumps are environment friendly and do not use the depleting and carbon producing fossil fuels.

The principle behind geothermal heat pumps is that in winters, the pumps move the heat from the earth into your house and in summers, the devices pull heat from your home and discharge it into the ground.В  These systems use a heat pump to force the transfer of heat. The core of the heat pump is a loop of refrigerant pumped through a vapour-compression refrigeration cycle that moves the heat.

The geothermal heat pumps are broadly classified as closed loop heat pumps and open loop heat pumps. Let us discus them in details:

Closed Loop – This system uses two loops on the ground side primary and secondary loops. The primary refrigerant loop is contained in the appliance cabinet where it exchanges heat with a secondary water loop that is buried underground. After leaving the internal heat exchanger, the water flows through the secondary loop outside the building to exchange heat with the ground before returning. During winter the water absorb heat from the ground source and brings it to heat the building, while in summers the water draws heat out from the building and transfers it back to the ground source thus cooling the building.

Closed loop heat pumps come in two different types, namely the vertical closed loop and the other is the horizontal closed loop. The only difference between the two is that the vertical closed pump has pipes which run vertical through the ground while the horizontal closed loops have pipes running horizontally through the ground.

Open Loop – In an open loop heat pump, the secondary loop draws in natural water from an external source like a well or any water body into a heat exchanger inside the heat pump.  Heat is either extracted or added by the primary refrigerant loop and then the water is returned back to irrigation trench, or to the water body.

Geothermal heat pumps are economical, environment friendly, safe and comfortable source of energy and are a must buy. But when you are installing one make sure you consult an experienced heating and cooling company that can properly put in piping that reaches far through the ground to ensure highest efficiency.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 15th, 2010 at 7:10 am and is filed under Geothermal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.