Design and analyses of earth-air heat exchange systems for space cooling

Temperature lag between atmosphere and earth can be harnessed using earth air heat exchange (EAHE) systems. In general, temperature difference between atmosphere and soil can be employed both for cooling and heating, during summer and winter, respectively. In this paper, the adopted and implemented 1-dimensional heat transfer models are validated with the performed experiment at IIT Rajasthan. The measured soil and air temperature are used for this purpose. The analyses of measured air temperature in EAHE indicate the achieved cooling along the length of EAHE at the considered depth. Furthermore, detailed 3-dimensional RANS based CFD analyses are performed for a better understanding and insight to this cooling process. The measured and model analyzed soil temperature has indicted the requirement of further improvement in the adopted soil model. Finally, an integrated semi-permanent structure with EAHE is analyzed. The CFD analyzed temperature and flow distribution in the semi-permanent structure reveals the influence of position of cooled air injection from EAHE. ©2012 IEEE.