In order to face the growing energy demands, renewable energy sources can provide an alternative to fossil fuels. Thus, low-enthalpy geothermal plants may play a fundamental role in those areas—such as the Province of Viterbo—where shallow groundwater basins occur and conventional geothermal plants cannot be developed. This may lead to being fuelled by locally available sources. The aim of the present paper is to exploit the heat coming from a low-enthalpy geothermal system. The experimental plant consists in a down-hole heat exchanger for civil purposes and can supply thermal needs by district heating. An implementation in MATLAB environment is provided in order to develop a mathematical model. As a consequence, the amount of withdrawable heat can be successfully calculated.

The need to address climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions attaches great importance to research aimed at using renewable energy. Geothermal energy is an interesting alternative concerning the production of energy for air conditioning of buildings (heating and cooling), through the use of geothermal heat pumps. In this work a model has been developed in order to simulate an air conditioning system with geothermal heat pump. A ground source heat pump (GSHP) uses the shallow ground as a source of heat, thus taking advantage of its seasonally moderate temperatures. GSHP must be coupled with geothermal exchangers. The model leads to design optimization of geothermal heat exchangers and to verify the operation of the geothermal plant.