The thermal behavior of a novel wall radiator panel coupled with horizontal ground source heat pump heating system: improve indoor environment to reduce the airborne transmission of infectious diseases

Abstract

Motivated by the rapid spread of the novel pandemic disease (COVID-19) that swept the most countries in the world, a new radiation heating system consists of wall radiator panel system connected to a reversible geothermal heat pump (GHP) coupled with horizontal ground heat exchanger (HGHX) was proposed as fast and permanent solution to the risks of the dispersion of airborne infectious diseases in air-conditioned enclosed spaces. An experimental system was installed and tested in the laboratory of thermal process of Research and Technology Center of Energy (CRTEn), Tunisia, in order to achieve the two main goals of this work: developing a new radiation heating system with quick and inexpensive implementation while ensuring high efficiency and environment-friendly performance for the entire system. The results obtained show that it is feasible to use the novel RPHs as heat rejecter of the horizontal ground source heat pump system (HGSHPs) for heating buildings with limited surface land areas epically those located in the Mediterranean regions such as Tunisia, the average performance coefficients of the geothermal heat pump COPhp and the overall system COPsys are found to be 6.3 and 3, respectively. The thermal comfort analysis indicates that there is only a small vertical temperature fluctuation in the test room that would not produce any negative effect on thermal comfort.