Thermo-economic analysis of working fluids for a ground source heat pump for domestic uses

Ground source heat pump, due to high coefficient of performance (COP) and use of low-temperature thermal energy source, is one of the best technologies to use renewable energy resources. In this work, at first, a geothermal heat pump for heating with an economizer is simulated, and then the effects of the variations in different parameters such as evaporator pressure, condensation pressure, and intermediate pressure on heat pump and total COP and exergy efficiency are analyzed. Initially, the thermodynamic simulation of the system is performed for different working fluids (R134a, R-12, R152a, R1234yf, and R1234ze(E)) in the EES software programming environment. The COP and exergy efficiency are calculated for different working fluids and obtained optimal values. The best overall coefficient of performance of the system is related to fluid R134a with a value of 3.663 and the best overall exergy efficiency of the system is related to fluid R1234ze(E) with a value of 0.5517. The lowest PCEU value is for fluid R152a with 0.01247$ per kilowatt. It can be concluded that by reducing the evaporator pressure of the cycle, the cost of producing an energy unit will be cheaper and by reducing the middle pressure of the cycle, the cost of producing an energy unit will be more expensive.