| Abstract |
The whole territory of the Republic of Belarus belongs to comparatively cold Precambrian East European Platform. Therefore there are no high-enthalpy geothermal resources, like the underground steam, water-steam manifestations or warm soil localities, within the platform cover suitable to create the electricity production. In result available low temperature and low-enthalpy geothermal resources are used as a rule for heating purposes. First geothermal Installations were put into operation in Belarus since the beginning of nineties of the last century. They represented ground source heat pumps (GSHP) systems used for heating of buildings at territories of waterworks located in the vicinity of Minsk city (the capital of Belarus). Later GSHP installations were constructed and put into operation in vicinities of other towns and settlements all over the whole territory of the country. Most of them are used for heating of houses and different buildings such like dwelling houses, greenhouses, waterworks, one border crossing station, a sport building, local hospital, etc. The country belongs to the area of lukewarm climate, therefore not many of them also provide cooling of living quarters during summer time. All geothermal heating systems are based on the heat pump technology. The total number of installations under exploitation for the end of 2014 exceeds 100 – 130. The output of all geothermal heating systems (installed capacity) is above 6 – 6.5 MWth. The individual installations range from 6 to 1000 KWth depending on the type and size of the building they serve. The highest installed capacity is 1 MWth at the greenhouse Berestye located at the eastern edge of the Brest town close to the Belarus–Poland national boundary. This installation uses the groundwater pumped out of a deep borehole with the temperature of 24 °C at its wellhead; this water is used also for watering of growing plants. Dozens of geothermal systems are located in dwelling houses. Several typical examples of geothermal heating systems are considered below. |