Design of an apparatus to measure the unsteady temperature distribution around straight and u-shaped heated cylinders buried vertically in an infinite medium (application to ground source heat pumps)

Abstract

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.

A major task of designing a ground source heat pump system (GSHP) is sizing of its ground heat exchanger (GHE; usually a run of straight or coiled or U-shaped pipe buried in the ground vertically or horizontally). The sizing of a GHE and prediction of its performance is complicated by many factors such as: the transient nature of the heat exchange; the accumulative effect and the history of heat exchange; the depth dependency of the ground’s undisturbed temperature and thermal properties, and the presence of ground water. This paper presents the design of a laboratory apparatus to study GHE responses under controlled and specified conditions; as well as to introduce fundamental aspects of GHE to engineering students.