SaFEGround - Sustainable, Flexible and Efficient Ground-source heating and cooling systems
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Civil & Environmental Engineering
Abstract
Through the 2008 Climate Change act, the UK committed to reduce by 80% its carbon emissions. While great progress has been made so far, data suggests that reductions in emissions have been achieved through switching electricity production to greener, more environmentally friendly sources, such as offshore wind. Clearly, it is inevitable that, to achieve further reductions in carbon emissions, we need to look for improvements elsewhere, such as heating and cooling of buildings, which accounts for 25% of all UK final energy consumption and 15% of carbon emissions.
Project SaFEGround aims to provide a template for reducing emissions associated to heating and cooling through the deployment of heat pumps. These are efficient devices capable of extracting heat from a storage medium, e.g. air for air-source heat pumps or the ground for ground-source heat pumps, and this is done with high efficiency, since for each unit of electricity consumed by the system, it is usual to get 3-4 units of heat. Clearly, these are more environmentally-friendly than boilers as they require only electricity, which, as mentioned above, is increasingly being generated from renewable and low-carbon sources.
Therefore, SaFEGround will investigate how ground-source heat pumps can be coupled with civil engineering structures to deliver low-carbon heating and cooling in a sustainable, safe and efficient manner. To achieve this, SaFEGround will combine research on material science, heat pump technology, energy geotechnics, building energy systems modelling, whole-system modelling and finance, to demonstrate that ground source energy systems can play an important role in the UK's future low-carbon energy mix in a cost-effective manner.
Project SaFEGround aims to provide a template for reducing emissions associated to heating and cooling through the deployment of heat pumps. These are efficient devices capable of extracting heat from a storage medium, e.g. air for air-source heat pumps or the ground for ground-source heat pumps, and this is done with high efficiency, since for each unit of electricity consumed by the system, it is usual to get 3-4 units of heat. Clearly, these are more environmentally-friendly than boilers as they require only electricity, which, as mentioned above, is increasingly being generated from renewable and low-carbon sources.
Therefore, SaFEGround will investigate how ground-source heat pumps can be coupled with civil engineering structures to deliver low-carbon heating and cooling in a sustainable, safe and efficient manner. To achieve this, SaFEGround will combine research on material science, heat pump technology, energy geotechnics, building energy systems modelling, whole-system modelling and finance, to demonstrate that ground source energy systems can play an important role in the UK's future low-carbon energy mix in a cost-effective manner.
Organisations
- Imperial College London (Lead Research Organisation)
- ENERCRET Ltd (Project Partner)
- Hubbard Products (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- E.ON (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe BV (Project Partner)
- Cementation Skanska Limited (Project Partner)
- PCM Products Limited (Project Partner)
- isoenergy (Project Partner)
- Atkins (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Geotechnical Consulting Group (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
- Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Project Partner)
- LEICESTER CITY COUNCIL (Project Partner)
- Arup Group (United Kingdom) (Project Partner)
Publications
Freire Ordóñez D
(2023)
Quantifying global costs of reliable green hydrogen
in Energy Advances
Freire Ordóñez, Diego
(2023)
Quantifying global costs of reliable green hydrogen
Ghalandari T
(2023)
Thermal performance optimisation of Pavement Solar Collectors using response surface methodology
in Renewable Energy
Ghalandari T
(2023)
Thermal and structural response of a pavement solar collector prototype
in Symposium on Energy Geotechnics 2023
Gkaniatsou E
(2022)
Producing cold from heat with aluminum carboxylate-based metal-organic frameworks
in Cell Reports Physical Science
Liu R
(2023)
A simplified methodology for determining the thermal performance of thermo-active piles
in Environmental Geotechnics
Mersch M
(2022)
The Role and Value of CCS in Integrated Heat and Power Systems of the UK
in SSRN Electronic Journal
Mersch M
(2023)
The impact of the energy crisis on the UK's net-zero transition.
in iScience
Nemati H
(2023)
Heat transfer characteristics of thermally and hydrodynamically developing flows in multi-layer mini-channel heat sinks
in International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer
Description | UCD Workshop - Geothermal Energy, Thermal Energy Storage & District Heating |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | This was a one-day workshop organised by University College Dublin to discuss current research on geothermal energy, thermal energy storage and district heating. The audience was mostly engineering practitioners who engaged with SaFEGround's research on thermo-active piles. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://alertgeomaterials.eu/2022/12/one-day-ucd-webinar-geothermal-energy-thermal-energy-storage-an... |