Cooling Towers as Supplemental Heat Rejection Systems in Ground Source Heat Pumps for Residential Houses in Texas and Other Semi-Arid Regions
Simulation results from a hybrid ground source heat pump model are presented for a residential home that integrates a compact cooling tower into an existing ground source heat pump model. The tower is introduced to assess its impact on the operational and economic performance over that of a GSHP alone. Metrics include initial and lifetime operational costs, ground heating effects, heat pump efficiency, and ability to control the temperature of the conditioned space. A single story, 195 m2 house located in Austin, Texas is used as a cooling-dominated test case. Simulations spanning 10-years of operation show that adding the cooling tower is cost effective, but more importantly, it extends the lifetime of the borehole system and maintains the heat pump efficiencies at high levels.