CFD Simulation on Ground Tube Heat Exchanger using Copper and Aluminum as Tube Material

Abstract

Renewable energy is free in nature and it must be brought into application. Due to use of air conditioning and its refrigerants global warming is a serious issue. Renewable energy is the main concept of an earth tube heat exchanger, which uses the thermal energy of the ground for cooling and heating of the fluid medium. Here, air is used as fluent working medium. The air cools in summer and gets heated in winter due to the temperature difference between the air and underground surface temperature. However, for the study of the surface heat convection study of model is carried out. Researchers have been carried out at beginning as a field investigation. But presently software simulation is used for measurement of heat transfer and temperature difference at the outlet and inlet. The software requires complex model and its dimensioning process, such a system which involves optimization of numerous parameters such as the diameter, air flow rate depth, tube length and condensation in the meantime have to be considered. ANSYS Software is being used for simulation and modeling of result. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD fluent) workbench under ANSYS software is used as simulation analysis the pipe of 45 m length, 0.004 m thickness, 0.08 m diameter and 5 m depth of pipe from the earth ground. Air velocity is considered to be 2 m/s. The inlet temperature is considered for a day of every month in a year according the previous research. Using fluent thermal variations is being analyzed. It is observed at increasing velocity increases the rate of heat transfer, mid temperature, outlet temperature vary in the year.