Abstract
Most of the domestic residential buildings have used the traditional radiant heating system, circulating hot water through the cross-linked polyethylene(PE-X) pipe buried in the floor panel of the heating space. New type of the heating panel was recently developed using heat pipes with double wicks. Some experiments were carried out in this study to verify the thermal characteristics of this heating system at the unit heating space which surrounded by outer space whose temperature of air be maintained scheduled value with time. Through the various experiments with several parameters, such as flow rate, inlet and outlet temperatures of hot water and the heating duration and so on, we found that the floor heating system with heat pipes was able to reduce the pumping power for hot water circulation by 4~31% compared with the conventional panel heating system using PE-X pipe. These results could be used for optimal design and efficient operation of the heating system as well as improvement of thermal comfort.
