• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.58-63
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• 2009

A ground-loop heat exchanger for the ground source heat pump system is the core equipment determining the thermal performance and initial cost of the system. The size and performance of the heat exchanger is highly dependent on the ground thermal properties - the ground effective thermal conductivity, the borehole thermal resistance and the undisturbed ground temperature. Nowadays, precast concrete piles using steel reinforced precast concrete piles - energy piles - are used to reduce the installing cost of the ground-loop heat exchanger. We were carried out some tests to investigate the effects of some parameters such as borehole length, grouting materials and U-tube configuration of the energy piles. 4 concrete piles, each measuring $250mm{\sim}400mm$ in diameter and approx. 10m in length, and rigged with single spiral and 3 U-tube loop of $16mm{\times}2.3mm$ PB piping. The thermal response tests were conducted using a testing device for 4-different ground-loop heat exchangers. During the heating period, the energy piles absorb the heat of 0.89kW to 1.37kW.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.296-300
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• 2004

Performance evaluation and economic estimation were conducted on the water to water GSHP (Ground Source Heat Pump) installed in existing building. Ground heat exchanger was a closed vertical loop type and sized to be 5 boreholes and 100m depth per borehole. Operation efficiency of the system shows that, COP increased from 3.0 to 4.2 with entering water temperature in heating operation, however, COP decreased from 5.0 to 3.7 in cooling operation. Economic estimation was analyzed by LCC (Life Cycle Cost) method and it showed that GSHP could save 68% of cost compare to the conventional oil source. Thus, despite of the large amount of initial cost, GSHP has a economic advantage to the other energy sources.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.64-81
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• 2016

To analyze the influence of various groundwater flow rates (specific discharge) on BHE system with balanced and unbalanced energy loads under assuming same initial temperature (15℃) of ground and groundwater, numerical modeling using FEFLOW was used for this study. When groundwater flow is increased from 1 × 10⁻⁷ to 4 × 10⁻⁷m/s under balanced energy load, the performance of BHE system is improved about 26.7% in summer and 22.7% at winter time in a single BHE case as well as about 12.0~18.6% in summer and 7.6~8.7% in winter time depending on the number of boreholes in the grid, their array type, and bore hole separation in multiple BHE system case. In other words, the performance of BHE system is improved due to lower avT in summer and higher avT in winter time when groundwater flow becomes larger. On the contrary it is decreased owing to higher avT in summer and lower avT in winter time when the numbers of BHEs in an array are increased, Geothermal plume created at down-gradient area by groundwater flow is relatively small in balanced load condition while quite large in unbalanced load condition. Groundwater flow enhances in general the thermal efficiency by transferring heat away from the BHEs. Therefore it is highly required to obtain and to use adequate informations on hydrogeologic characterristics (K, S, hydraulic gradient, seasonal variation of groundwater temperature and water level) along with integrating groundwater flow and also hydrogeothermal properties (thermal conductivity, seasonal variation of ground temperatures etc.) of the relevant area for achieving the optimal design of BHE system.