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raw · papers · ingested 2026-09-19

A Review of Sustainable Development in Harnessing Geothermal and Solar Energy for Residual-Heat Utilization in Refrigeration and District Cooling (Francisco-Hernandez et al. 2025) + Beckers 2021 Deep Direct-Use

Source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43621-025-01138-4

Provenance: Peer-reviewed open-access review from Mexican geothermal/solar groups; some numbers are cross-study means. Companion Beckers 2021 is an NREL landmark (57 citations) read at abstract level only. Retrieved via research agent.

Installed-base inventory (geothermal-driven chillers)

  • Building cooling cases: 38% LiBr-H₂O, 46% NH₃-H₂O; mean cooling capacity 1,276.6 kW (363 TR); mean geofluid mass flow ~35 kg/s; mean drive temperature ~110 °C.
  • Food-refrigeration cases: 90–100 °C source, mean COP ~0.6, mean capacity 10.6 kW (3 TR), mean flow 0.32 kg/s.
  • Cross-study economics: mean energy/exergy efficiencies ~37%; mean payback 5.6 years (geothermal-assisted 6.4 yr; UWA deep-well case 11–13 yr).
  • Named installations: Oregon Institute of Technology 1,095 kW (312 TR) LiBr-H₂O; Cerro Prieto, Mexico 18 kW NH₃-H₂O; Los Azufres 10.5 kW; Las Tres Vírgenes half-effect NH₃-LiNO₃; Puertecitos 35 kW; Jamaica geothermal milk storage.
  • Polygeneration examples: flash-binary multigeneration 871.3 kW cooling at 61% energy efficiency; oilfield polygeneration 60.31 kW cooling at up to 75%.
  • Frames district cooling systems as the natural sink for geothermal cascade heat; categorizes geothermal use as direct (brine → chiller) vs cascade (power → heat → chiller).

Quote: “Table 3 shows cases instances of cooling buildings using geothermal energy, with 38% and 46% employing LiBr-H2O and NH3-H2O, respectively. These works exhibit a mean cooling capacity of 1276.6 kW (363 TR).”

Companion: Beckers, Kolker, Pauling, McTigue, Kesseli 2021 — “Evaluating the feasibility of geothermal deep direct-use in the United States”

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114335 (Energy Conversion and Management 243; abstract via OpenAlex; OSTI 1813622)

  • Reviews the six DOE Deep Direct-Use feasibility studies (2017–2019), modelled in GEOPHIRES, for heating, cooling and thermal storage from km-scale (unstimulated) reservoirs.
  • LCOH $13–350/MWh across projects, driven by reservoir temperature, depth, flow, utilization, drilling cost and discount rate. Lowest-cost projects comparable to fossil district heating and cheaper than gas boilers or heat pumps.
  • “Chilled water production with absorption chillers driven by a high-quality geothermal resource obtained attractive levelized [cost] values … lower than decentralized air-conditioning units.” Incentives gave only small improvements. Four of six within GeoVision 2019 LCOH ranges.

Abstract-level leads (paywalled; not fetched)

  • Ehyaei, Ahmadi, El Haj Assad, Rosen 2020, J. Cleaner Production 258:120780 — LiBr chiller downstream of a geothermal ORC “increases the energy efficiency of the system from 9.3% to 47.3%”; MOPSO optimum 0.0033 $/kWh combined; exergy efficiency 6.8%.
  • Schifflechner et al. 2023, Renewable Energy 207:218–233 — eight geothermal ORC + absorption chiller + heat-supply configurations, serial vs parallel, with part-load behaviour. Companion ECOS paper on optimal absorption-chiller integration in geothermal trigeneration.
  • Leveni & Cozzolino 2021, Energy Conv. Mgmt. — Goswami cycle vs cascade ORC/absorption for geothermal: exergy efficiency 35.5% vs 32.8%; cost 11.8 vs 14.6 M€.
  • Alhuyi-Nazari et al. 2024, J. Building Engineering — comprehensive review of geothermal sources for absorption chillers in buildings (82 refs).
  • IEEE 2019 parametric geothermal parallel-flow double-effect LiBr: COP ~1.32, 475 kW — the only geothermal double-effect number found; needs >~140 °C brine.
  • Shamoushaki et al. 2021 (Energies 14:4464) flash-binary geothermal CCHP at 170 °C / 100 kg/s: energy efficiency 11%, exergy 58–61%, LCOE 6.2–6.5 ¢/kWh — but its “cooling” is a vapor-compression loop on the ORC fluid, not sorption; a warning that “geothermal CCHP” papers are often not sorption-based.

Negative finding

An OpenAlex open-access search 2018–2026 returned no peer-reviewed paper on a geothermal-driven adsorption chiller; the geothermal cooling literature is essentially all absorption (LiBr/H₂O, NH₃/H₂O, some LiCl/H₂O and NH₃/LiNO₃). Adsorption at 60–95 °C drive would fit reject-brine temperatures but is unstudied in the geothermal-specific literature.

Relevance to the cooling wiki

Backbone inventory for the geothermal-driven sorption cooling article: working pairs, sizes, drive temperatures and paybacks of the real installed base, plus the explicit research gap on adsorption.