With the increase of mine depth, the heat damage becomes more and more obvious. It is difficult to meet the cooling demand of deep mines only by optimizing ventilation. The key to mine cooling by using refrigeration cycle is to choose a reasonable heat sink (cold source). Taking the demand of heat damage control in a gold mine in Guizhou as the background, based on the concept of energy tunnel, it was proposed to use the filled abandoned roadway as a cold source to receive the heat transferred from the fresh air inlet or the underground working face, so as to achieve the purpose of cooling the underground space. The thermal physical parameters of filling materials of abandoned roadway and surrounding rock were measured, and the cold source model of abandoned roadway was established. The 20-year operation was simulated, and the outlet water temperature, heat transfer power and system energy efficiency under two operating modes and three heat exchange tube layout scenarios were obtained. The results show that only by increasing the number of heat exchange tubes, the technical and economic indicators cannot be significantly improved. The intermittent operation mode can alleviate the heat accumulation of the heat sink and improve the heat transfer intensity of per unit tube length, which is conducive to the long-term stable operation of the system. According to the cooling load of the working face, the scrap power threshold is set, and the total heat storage of the heat sink within the service life is calculated. Combined with the heat transfer intensity of per unit tube length, the feasibility of different application scenarios are compared and evaluated. The research results provide a new idea for the reuse of abandoned mine space and the treatment of underground heat damage.