Abstract
This study presents a novel heat exchanger configuration, called a deeply penetrating U-shaped configuration, for energy piles. The outlet water temperature, temperature variation along the tube, and heat transfer rate are simulated and computed using Comsol Multiphysics software. The simulations are for the cooling mode. The proposed configuration is compared with traditional U-shaped and W-shaped configurations to prove its superiority. The thermal performance of the pile group is compared with that of a single pile to investigate the effects of the pile group on the heat transfer. A parametric analysis is performed to investigate the effects of several important parameters (i.e., pile spacing, pile diameter, soil type, and thermal parameters) on the heat transfer performance of an energy pile group with the proposed deeply penetrating U-shaped configuration. The results indicate that the corner pile indicates a nonnegligible heat transfer rate 6.8% and 9.9% higher than the central pile in quincuncial and squared arrangements. Purely from the standpoint of thermal performance, the pile spacing is recommended to be more than 6.8 times the pile diameter to reduce the influence of the pile group on the heat transfer capacity.
Highlights
In recent years, the demand for renewable, clean, and efficient energy has been extended for sustainable development
An energy pile with a deeply penetrating U-shaped heat exchanger is a pile foundation in which the heat exchange tube is embedded and attached to a reinforcement cage, with the tube being arranged in a U shape and its bottom penetrating through the bottom of the pile and sticking deeply into the soil below the pile
This study adopted a numerical model of a pile group, which was verified against the experimental results in the literature
Summary
The demand for renewable, clean, and efficient energy has been extended for sustainable development. Studies have been conducted to analyze the costs, heat transfer rate, and coefficient of performance of ground source heat pump systems [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Self et al compared a ground source heat pump with conventional heating systems in terms of costs, CO2 emissions and other parameters and found that geothermal heat pumps are more efficient heating technologies [2]. Hamada et al conducted a long-term space heating test with an energy pile system and indicated that the average coefficient of performance was quite high (=3.9) and that the seasonal primary energy reduction reached 23.2%, compared with a typical air conditioning
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