Technical, Economical and Environmental Feasibility Study of Urban Heating System Replaced with Geothermal Energy in IRAN

The exploitation of geothermal energy for environmental and regional heating is one of the most appropriate and the most common methods of direct use of the earth heat. Having decades of experience in vast regions of the world has provided useful information on how to execute geothermal projects and the obtained findings.
This study has investigated the primary conducted measures to use geothermal energy directly. Then, using GIS and Iran’s geothermal atlas, it identifies cities located in geothermal areas. Afterwards, it has investigated the consumption of the main four energy carriers (Kerosene, crude, gas oil, and natural gas) in domestic, business, and public sections for heating use in the above said cities and finally, it evaluates the economic and environmental considerations obtained from heating system replacement fitting the geothermal energy.
Findings: The results show that the exploitation of geothermal energy to heat buildings and domestic, business, and public spaces in cities located in geothermal areas will consume annually more than 378 million lit of Kerosene, 159 million lit gas oil, 64 million lit of fuel oil, and 1,370 million m3lit of natural gas which can be allocated to the exports and more than 725 million dollars can be accrued annually to the country. Calculations related to the cost of establishing the urban heating concentrated system has been conducted for Sarein and it was shown that the related amount almost costs 3.2 milliard toman and the amount of providing heating energy in each Kwh costs 107 toman. The return period of the capital in the current study has been estimated 3.5 (three and a half year). The decline level of fluid temperature passing through the transferor pipes and the output of the aforementioned system (considering reinjection into the earth and the heating loss of the fluid transferor pipes) have been estimated 3 centigrade and 46 percent, respectively.