Novel Heat Pump-Based Energy Systems for Decarbonization of Cold-Climate Urban Campus Buildings with Case Studies of T.M.U. Campus

Six heating/cooling systems – a base case, a conventional ambient loop distributed heat pump system, a wastewater-source ambient loop distributed heat pump system, a hybrid wastewater-source ambient loop distributed heat pump system, a ground-source ambient loop distributed heat pump system, and a hybrid ground-source ambient loop distributed heat pump system – were simulated in a proposed campus building and an existing campus building cluster. The proposed campus building was modelled under the weather conditions of five Canadian cities, while the existing cluster was modelled under Toronto weather conditions only. For both the proposed new building and the existing building cluster, wastewater-source, hybrid wastewater-source, and ground-source ambient loop distributed heat pump systems were shown to provide meaningful reductions in annual energy consumption for heating/cooling as well as associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as against the base and conventional ambient loop cases under all climatic conditions. Relative economic performance of the studied systems differed based on provincial energy pricing schemas.