Performance analysis of vertical earth pipe cooling system for subtropical climate

Energy crisis is one of the major problems facing the progress of human society. There are on-going researches to overcome this and maintain a sustainable environment. Earth pipe cooling technology is seen as one of the viable options to reduce energy consumption for a hot and humid subtropical climate. The system works with a long buried pipe with one end for the intake of ambient air and the other end for providing air cooled by soil to the desired space such as residential, agricultural or industrial buildings. It can be an attractive economical alternative to conventional cooling since there are no compressors or any customary mechanical unit. This paper reports the performance of a vertical earth pipe cooling system for ahot and humid subtropical climatic zone in Queensland, Australia. A series of buried pipes installed vertically were used in order to increase the cooling performance of the system. To measure the performance of the system, a thermal model was developed and simulated using ANSYS Fluent. Data were collected from two modelled rooms built from two shipping containers and installed at Central Queensland University,Rockhampton, Australia. The impact of air temperature and velocity on room cooling performance has also been assessed. A temperature reduction of 1.82oC was observed in the room connected to the vertical earth pipe cooling system, which will save the energy cost for thermal cooling in buildings. Only 0.52% variation intemperature was found in numerical result in comparison with experimental result.