Air–soil heat exchangers for heating and cooling of buildings: Design guidelines, potentials and constraints, system integration and global energy balance

• Published in: Applied energy Vol. 119; pp. 476 - 487
• Main Authors: Hollmuller, Pierre, Lachal, Bernard
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 15.04.2014; Elsevier
• Subjects: air flow; Air–soil heat exchanger; Applied sciences; Asymmetry; Buildings; Buried pipe system; Climate; Cooling systems; Design engineering; Devices using thermal energy; Earth–air tunnel; Energy; energy balance; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Exact sciences and technology; Guidelines; Heat exchangers; Heat exchangers (included heat transformers, condensers, cooling towers); Heating; Passive cooling and heating; temperature; Air–soil heat exchanger; Earth–air tunnel; Buried pipe system; Passive cooling and heating; Energy balance; Soils; Cooling; Air―soil heat exchanger; Buildings; Heating; Constraint; Heat exchanger; Buried pipe; Earth―air tunnel
• ISSN: 0306-2619; 1872-9118
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.01.042

•Overview of analytical models, numerical simulation, system integration and overall energy balance.•Climate independent design guidelines for amplitude dampening of yearly or daily temperature oscillation.•Highlighting of potentials and limits for preheating and cooling of buildings.•Comparison with other passive cooling techniques.•System integration (conflicts and synergies with other components) and derivation of overall energy balance. Air–soil heat exchangers for heating and cooling of buildings are analyzed under various aspects. Based on the analytically resolved case of a constant airflow subject to sinusoidal temperature input, we start by deriving climate independent design guidelines, for dampening of the daily and/or the yearly temperature oscillation. In a second step, constraints and potential of buried pipe systems are analyzed for the case of a typical Central European climate, for which the constraint between climate and comfort threshold induces a fundamental asymmetry between preheating and cooling potential. Finally, it is shown that the net yield of an air–soil heat exchanger has to take into account more than the mere input–output temperature differential.