Analysis of Effective Soil Thermal Conductivities and Borehole Thermal Resistances with a Line Source Method

Investigation of the effective soil thermal conductivity(k) is the first step in designing the ground loop heat exchanger(borehole) of a geothermal heat pump system. The line source method is required by New and Renewable Energy Center of Korea Energy Management Corporation in analyzing data obtained from thermal response tests. Another important factor in designing the ground loop heat exchanger is the borehole thermal resistance($R_b$). There are two methods to evaluate $R_b$ : one is to use a line source method, and the other is to use a shape factor of the borehole. In this study, we demonstrated that the line source method produces better results than the shape factor method in evaluating $R_b$. This is because the borehole thermal resistance evaluated with the line source method characteristically reduces the temperature differences between an actual and a theoretical thermal behaviors of the borehole. Evaluation of $R_b$ requires soil volumetric heat capacity. However, the effect of the soil volumetric heat capacity on the borehole thermal resistance is very small. Therefore, it is possible to use a generally accepted average value of soil volumetric heat capacity($=2MJ/m^3{\cdot}K$) in the analysis. In this work, it is also shown that an acceptable range of the initial ignoring time should be in the range of 8~16hrs. Thus, a mean value of 12 hrs is recommended.

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