CFD Analysis of Geothermal Heat Exchanger at Different Orientation

Abstract

The main objective of present work to investigate the arrangements of piping system of earth tube heat exchanger for better thermal comfort. For these work CFD analysis on three different designs of earth tube heat exchanger for summer and winter session for Bhopal location have been performed. computational fluid dynamics analysis have been performed on earth tube heat exchanger using horizontal pipe at various air velocity such as 0.5m/sec, 1 m/sec, 2m/sec, 3m/sec, 4m/sec & 5m/sec for summer session, to get temperature distribution inside the earth tube heat exchanger. Results show that there are drop of temperature in summer session range from 318K to 296K and rise of temperature in winter session range from 288K to 296.7K. It has been observed from the results of computational fluid dynamic analysis that the earth tube heat exchanger using horizontal pipe gives better result as compared with vertical and inclined piping arrangement. So it is recommended that the earth tube heat exchanger using horizontal pipe arrangement may be used for better thermal comfort.