International Journal of Agriculture Environment and Biotechnology
  • Year: 2019
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 1

Performance of Thermo Hydraulic Designed Single Pass Earth Air Heat Exchanger

  • Author:
  • Deldan Namgial1,, Kamal Gurmit Singh2, V.S. Hans3, Rajan Aggarwal2, Angrej Singh2
  • Total Page Count: 8
  • Page Number: 55 to 62

1HMAARI, SKUAST-K, Leh, (J&K), India

2Department of Soil & Water Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India

3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India

*Corresponding author: deldan.namgial@gmail.com (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-9394-5489)

Online published on 30 May, 2019.

Abstract

In present study thermo-hydraulic design method by Paepe and Janssens (2003) was illustrated and used for evaluation of single pass Earth-Air Heat Exchanger (EAHE) system. Such designed EAHE was installed at the research field of Soil and Water Engineering Department, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India (75o88´E & 30o95´N). It consists of 42 m single PVC pipe of 0.25 m diameter buried at 3.5 m depth. The thermister 2k temperature sensors and Dl2 data logger were used for data recording. The maximum and minimum tube efficiencies were obtained at 2.3 and 24 m/s, respectively. The thermo-hydraulic designed earth air heat exchanger performed well as observed tube efficiency was near to designed efficiency. It was also observed that as velocity increases the tube efficiency decreases. The method proposed by Paepe and Janssens (2003) was simple, fast and reliable for installation of EAHE system in field too.

Owing to high operational cost in heating and cooling of greenhouse, the earth air heat exchanger is gaining popular as it uses the stored energy of deep sub surface soil.

Various numerical methods for design of earth air heat exchanger are available which is complex but analytical method proposed by Paepe and Janssens (2003) is simple and reliable.

The pipe length, pipe diameter and flow rate are main three parameters which are to be considered for design of EAHE.

Keywords

Thermo, earth air heat exchanger, thermister, tube efficiency