Modeling Study on Nearly-Zero Carbon Cooling in Single Houses With Underground Cold Storage

Abstract

Abstract Traditional air-conditioning systems are energy-intensive and contribute to severe environmental pollution. Despite these drawbacks, traditional air conditioners grow increasingly popular in rapidly expanding rural villas, exacerbating environmental concerns. It is very important to develop new technology that may substitute traditional air conditioners for space cooling. In this paper, we developed a nearly-zero-carbon cooling technology (NZCCT) that does not require heat pumps or air-conditioning devices as utilized in traditional indoor-cooling systems. The proposed cooling system employs solar and geothermal energy while using the naturally abundant underground soil space as energy storage. For the novel NZCCT systems, the influences of the rate and the category of circulation fluids, the initial temperature and the volume of underground cold storage, thermal conductivity and the diameter of pipes on the cooling performance in a single house have been modeled using comsol multiphysics. The simulation data have been analyzed, and the results demonstrated that the NZCCT methodology for space cooling in single houses could be realized without using heat pumps and air conditioners. A comfortable temperature could be maintained by using only clean energies. A significant amount of electricity to power heat pumps or air conditioners might be saved. The proposed technology is of great importance to reduce carbon emission from house cooling with traditional air conditioners.