CFD Analysis of Earth Tube Heat Exchanger for Year Round Application Using Aluminum Pipe as Tube Material

THERMAL ENGINEERING

The earth–air heat exchanger (ETHE) is a promising technique which can effectively be used to reduce the heating/cooling load of a building by preheating the air in winter and vice versa in summer. In the past twenty years, a lot of research has been conducted to develop investigative and mathematical models for the analysis of ETHE systems. Many researchers have developed sophisticated equations and procedures but they cannot be easily recast into design equations and must be used by trial-and-error. In this paper, the author has developed a model of the EAHE systems and analysis is conducted using CFD. The CFD simulation of ETHE system has been performed on ANSYS v16.2 software, taking aluminium tube of loop design under the climate condition of Bhopal (India) The simulation results shows that at 43 ⁰C ambient temperature the outlet air was 32 ⁰C and at 10 ⁰C ambient temperature the outlet air temperature was 20 ⁰C.

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