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Design of earth-air heat exchangers

Earth-air heat exchangers, also called ground tube heat exchangers, are an interesting technique to reduce energy consumption in a building. They can cool or heat the ventilation air, using cold or heat accumulated in the soil. Several papers have been published in which a design method is described. Most of them are based on a discretisation of the one dimensional heat transfer problem in the tube. Three dimensional complex models, solving conduction and moisture transport in the soil are also found. These methods are of high complexity and often not ready for use by designers. In this paper a 1 dimensional analytical method is used to analyse the influence of the design parameters of the heat exchanger on the thermo-hydraulic performance. A relation is derived for the specific pressure drop, linking thermal effectiveness with pressure drop of the air inside the tube. The relation is used to formulate a design method which can be used to determine the characteristic dimensions of the earth-air heat exchanger in such a way that optimal thermal effectiveness is reached with acceptable pressure loss. The choice of the characteristic dimensions, becomes thus independent of the soil and climatological conditions. This allows designers to choose the earth-air heat exchanger configuration with the best performance.