CQUniversity
Browse

Performance assessment of earth pipe cooling system for low energy buildings in a subtropical climate

journal contribution
posted on 2017-12-06, 00:00 authored by Shams Ahmed, Mohammad KhanMohammad Khan, Amanullah Maung Than Oo, Mohammad RasulMohammad Rasul, Nur HassanNur Hassan
Energy consumption in heating and cooling around the world has been a major contributor to global warming. Hence, many studies have been aimed at finding new techniques to save and control energy through energy efficient measures. Most of this energy is used in residential, agricultural and commercial buildings. It is therefore important to adopt energy efficiency measures in these buildings through new technologies and novel building designs. These new building designs can be developed by employing various passive cooling systems. Earth pipe cooling is one of these which can assist to save energy without using any customary mechanical units. This paper investigates the earth pipe cooling performance in a hot humid subtropical climate of Rockhampton, Australia. A thermal model is developed using ANSYS Fluent for measuring its performance. Impacts of air velocity, air temperature, relative humidity and soil temperature on room cooling performance are also assessed. A temperature reduction of around 2 °C was found for the system. This temperature reduction contributed to an energy saving of a maximum of 866.54 kW (8.82%) per year for a 27.23 m3 room.

History

Volume

106

Start Page

815

End Page

825

Number of Pages

11

eISSN

1879-2227

ISSN

0196-8904

Location

United Kingdom

Publisher

Elsevier

Language

en-aus

Peer Reviewed

  • Yes

Open Access

  • No

Era Eligible

  • Yes

Journal

Energy conversion and management.