BSC3100 Renewable Energy
Project #2 GSHP system design report
Assignment:
You were approached by the building owner of a high-rise apartment in Toronto regarding the feasibility of retrofitting the GSHP technology into the existing apartment building’s heating system. The building is about 20 years old. It has a set of conventional natural gas boilers to generate hot water for domestic hot water and space heating service when required. The hot water produced by the boilers is passed through a shell and tube heat exchanger to generate domestic hot water (DHW) for the building. The DHW system has its own controls and hot water storage tank. The hot water produced by the boilers is used to feed into a secondary service water distribution piping system for apartment unit space heating. The hot water from the boiler is mixed with the return water from the distribution system to give the desired supply distribution temperature.
The mechanical room is located in the penthouse on the 9th floor. From a quick walk-thru you noticed that there is plenty of space in the penthouse to install heat pumps and additional mechanical equipment for a GSHP system. You then found out that when the building was constructed, the owner had planned to include a chiller in the penthouse for air conditioning and the apartment units already have fan coils suitable installed for air conditioning. (For example, the thermostat and flow valves allow both heating and cooling controls, and the fan coil has a condensate drip tray and drain in place.)
You now feel more positive about this opportunity. The owner is asking you for your analysis and report on the design of a GSHP that could be retrofitted into the building. You indicated to the owner that you can do a quick conceptual design and analysis for $10,000 and asked for building heating load information and other details.
A week later, you received a PO for this study. Together with the PO, the owner also sent you the heating and cooling load from their building modelling consultant for a typical year and some photos of the building. You have one week to complete the job. The owner would like to have your report by the end of the dayFriday, October 30th for their next board meeting on Saturday, October 31st 9:00AM.
Report format:
Your firm has a standard conceptual design report format for this type of work.
The following report contents are expected:
1. Report cover page
2. Report purpose
3. Available information
4. Analysis methodology
5. Key findings and results
6. Conclusions and recommendations
7. References
Appendices (if required)
Additional useful information:
You are relatively new at your job. Fortunately there is a departmental meeting scheduled in the afternoon of October 13th. You are planning to bring this project up with your colleagues and discuss how best to proceed.
For this conceptual design and the budget available, it would not be possible to perform a thermal response test. From a number of previous GSHP projects in the area, you heard from your colleagues that the thermal conductivity for the local ground is approximately 1.3 Btu/h-ft-°F. The driller that your firm has utilized in recent years prefers to use a backfill material with thermal conductivity of 2.0 Btu/h-ft-°F.