Smart Pump System

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About the city. Denmark is at the forefront of innovation in district heating, and with new heat pumps utilising the integrated electrical grid and seawater, heating is becoming greener than ever. A new greenway of using one of the world’s most abundant resources have been discovered in the bay of the Danish city, Aarhus. The citizens of Aarhus are now able to get climate-friendly district heating from the seawater using a new seawater heat pump that does not emit greenhouse gas when producing heat.

Goal

The concept is to provide environmentally-friendly heat by extracting heat energy from the groundwater and utilising it when electricity is cheap.

Implementation period. The seawater heat pump has been tested during the fall of 2019 and is now operational. The next heat pump is expected to be installed in 2020.

Fact

Heating and cooling account for half of all energy consumption in the EU. Moreover, the lion’s share of this is still generated from fossil fuels, while around 18 per cent is generated from renewable energy, according to the EU.

Solutions

The new technology is that seawater is fed directly into the evaporator of the heat pump. Here the seawater is boiled at +5 degrees Celsius, and therefore, unlike other heat pumps, the heat pump does not need any refrigerant. There is a great climate-friendly potential in reducing the use of greenhouse gases, e.g. for refrigerants. This in turn shapes a great potential for the seawater pump to be exported and used in other countries as a climate-friendly heat solution.

There will be the best efficiency of the heat pump in the summer when the temperature of the water is highest. For example, if seawater is 16 degrees °C, 13 degrees °C is used for district heating, and the water is sent back to Aarhus Bay at 3 degrees.

Team

Smart pump system ‘Flexheat’, developed in a partnership between HOFOR, the Technical University of Denmark and Johnson Controls at EnergyLab in Copenhagen