Parametric Analysis of Earth Air Tube Heat Exchanger having soil with Different Moisture Content

Mechanical Engineering

Extraction of energy from the earth also called as geothermal energy is a source of renewable energy which provides low grade thermal energy with a very low impact on the environment. The techniques available for utilizing geothermal energy includes ground source heat pumps and earth to air tube heat exchangers. EATHE is an underground heat exchanger that works through burying pipes in the ground, which can cool or warm air by dissipating heat to or capturing heat from the ground. In the system cold or hot air as per the environmental conditions pass through the tubes buried underneath the ground, heat transfer takes place. As a result, temperature of air at the outlet of EATHE remains constant throughout the year. The effectiveness and performance of EATHE also depends on the moisture content of soil, making wet configuration of system. In this study, commercial CFD software ANSYS FLUENT is used to simulate the EATHE system to compare and validate the previously done experimental analysis. The geometrical model has been created for simple (dry) tunnel. One end of the pipe is the inlet of air while the other end of the pipe is the outlet This study consists of development of three different models of EATHE system i.e. dry soil system, soil with 5% moisture content, soil with 10% moisture content. We simulated the model for three different time intervals i.e. 1 hour, 6 hours and 12 hours operation for each case and compare the results withthe experimental study. The velocity of incoming air is kept constant at 5m/s.

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