Assessment of surface geothermal energy for air conditioning in northern Tunisia: Direct test and deployment of ground source heat pump system.

The aims of this paper are (1) to evaluate the geothermal resources in Tunisia and (2) to test the deployment of the surface geothermal energy for cooling application. The experiment consists of installing a ground source heat pump (GSHP) system, was carried out in the ‘Centre de Recherches et des Technologies de l’Energie’ (CRTEn) at Borj Cédria, northern Tunisia. The GSHP is composed with horizontal ground heat exchanger (GHE) connected to a reversible geothermal heat pump (GHP), which is connected to a chilled ceiling panel (CCP) system installed in a climate test room. The status of geothermal energy and its utilization are pointed out, the test of the direct use of surface geothermal is examined as well as the evaluation of the GSHP system for air conditioning. The important findings of this study are: (1) Tunisia benefits from important geothermal resources, but its use remains very limited, (2) the only use of the (GHE) has reduced the average temperature inside the climate test room of about 2 °C during 1 day. (3) The test of the GSHP system proves that it is a profitable solution in Tunisia, the coefficient of the performance of the GHP and the whole system are found to be 4.46 and 3.02, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]