Experimental Performance of Buried Tube Heat Exchanger Validated by Simulation Performance in Heating Climate Condition

Background: Earth energy is one of the important renewable energy sources which can be used for the cooling of room in summer and for heating in winter with a less impact on the environmental condition. Buried tube Heat Exchanger (BTHE) is a beneficial feature that reduces energy consumption in case of residential buildings. Objectives: The major objective of the research is to find out the optimum dimension of BTHE at Indian climate condition for that BTHE is used to reduce conventional air conditioning load and save energy sources for reducing the heating or cooling load of residential or any buildings. However, BTHE system can improve the indoor thermal comfort and reduce greenhouse gas emission. Core objective is to determine the exact tonnage capacity of BTHE for specific load in cooling and heating mode with respect to design and materials of BTHE. Methods/Statistical Analysis: BTHE consists of one or more tubes which are lied under the ground at buried depth for cooling in summer and for heating in winter and the air is to be supply in any building. Research work shows that there is a constant temperature at the depth of 3m from ground level by experimental setup of Temperature measuring probe throughout the year. The system has been setup at the depth of 3m from ground level and experiment has been done at the place, Vallabh Vidyanagar in India located at Latitude 22°N and Longitude 72°E by using RCC pipes. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is necessary for the comparison of experimental data and simulation data with the help of Ansys software. The research in CFD simulations were performed on various performance measurements, with different length of heat exchanger. Findings: From the above analysis we could find out dimension of Buried tube heat exchanger (BTHE), we installed an experimental setup at Vallabh Vidyanagar. It can be concluded from the comparison of the simulation results and experimental result that optimum performance of the BTHE system is at 3m depth from the ground this called buried depth and horizontal 25m buried length at specific dimension i.e. 110mm outer diameter with 6mm thickness of RCC pipes. Air velocity can be a major effective parameter for the performance of BTHE. Optimum performance of horizontal buried tube heat exchanger is obtained at 3 m/s with 25m length and 0.11 outer diameter of pipe; therefore a BTHE can be used for room cooling and heating purpose and can achieve the above objectives. Applications/Improvements: Buried tube heat exchanger is used as Buried tube air conditioning system. It can be used in summer climate condition for cooling purpose and in winter for heating the building. BTHE is also useful partially or fully to handle the building thermal loads.