Design of an earth air heat exchanger (EAHE) for climatic condition of Chennai, India

Abstract

In the present work the ground temperature has been validated for climatic condition of Sriperumbudur near Chennai, India to evaluate thermal conductivity and diffusivity of the soil. For the evaluated thermal conductivity of the soil, an EAHE has been designed for a given dimension of room with optimized values of number of air changes, length of pipe, radius of pipe and depth at which heat exchanger to be installed below the surface of the earth. It has been observed that there is a decrease of 5-6°C in the outlet air temperature in summer for a number of 5 air changes with 0.10 m and 21 m optimized diameter and length of pipe respectively.