• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.161-166
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• 2005

The objectives of this paper are to estimate the ground thermal conductivity by ground heat exchangers in two different places - Chooncheon and Wonjoo, and to analyze the effect of ground thermal conductivity on the ground thermal diffusivity and the size of the ground heat exchanger. In Chooncheon area, a single-U type HDPE pipe (25mm diameter) with borehole diameter of 150mm, length of 150m is installed. In Wonjoo area, a single-U type HDPE pipe (40mm diameter) with borehole diameter 150mm, length of 200m is installed. It is found that the ground thermal conductivities are estimated as 2.69 $W/m^{\circ}C$ and 2.99 $W/m^{\circ}C$ in Chooncheon and Wonjoo, respectively. It is also found that the ground heat exchanger size is reduced by 8.6% with 25% increase of ground thermal conductivity, and increase by 11.8% with 25% decrease of ground thermal conductivity.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.33-38
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• 2008

A ground-loop heat exchanger in a ground source heat pump system is an important unit that determines the thermal performance of a system and its initial cost. The Size and performance of this heat exchanger is highly dependent on ground thermal properties. A proper design requires certain site-specific parameters, most importantly the ground effective thermal conductivity, the borehole thermal resistance and the undisturbed ground temperature. This study was performed to investigate the effect of some parameters such as borehole lengths, various grouting materials and U-tube configurations on ground effective thermal conductivity. In this study, thermal response tests were conducted using a testing device with 9-different ground-loop heat exchangers. From the experimental results, the length of ground-loop heat exchanger affects to the effective thermal conductivity. Among the various grouting materials, the bentonite-based grout with silica sand shows the largest thermal conductivity value.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2011

A ground loop heat exchanger in a ground source heat pump system is an important unit that determines the thermal performance of a system and its initial cost. A proper design requires certain site specific parameters, most importantly the ground effective thermal conductivity, the borehole thermal resistance and the undisturbed ground temperature. This study was performed to investigate the effect of some parameters such as borehole lengths, various grouting materials and U tube configurations on ground effective thermal conductivity and borehole thermal resistance. In this study, thermal response tests were conducted using a testing device to 9 different ground loop heat exchangers. From the experimental results, the length of ground loop heat exchanger affects to the effective thermal conductivity. The results of this experiment shows that higher thermal conductivity of grouting materials leads to the increase effective thermal conductivity from 22 to 32%. Also, mounting spacers have increased by 14%.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.3371-3376
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• 2007

The design of a ground-source heat pump system includes specifications for a ground loop heat exchanger where the heat transfer rate depends on the thermal conductivity of the ground. To evaluate this heat transfer property, in-situ thermal response tests on four vertical test boreholes with different grouting materials were conducted by adding a monitored amount of heat to water over various test lengths. By measuring the water temperatures entering and exiting the loop, water flow rate, and heat load, effective thermal conductivity values of the ground were determined. The effect of increasing thermal conductivity of grouting materials from 0.82 to 1.05 W/m$^{\circ}C$ resulted in overall increases in effective ground thermal conductivity by 25.8% to 69.5%.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.45-51
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• 2009

A ground-loop heat exchanger in a ground source heat pump system is an important unit that determines the thermal performance of a system and its initial cost. The size and performance of this heat exchanger is highly dependent on ground thermal properties. A proper design requires certain site-specific parameters, most importantly the ground effective thermal conductivity, the borehole thermal resistance and the undisturbed ground temperature. This study was performed to investigate the effect of some parameters such as borehole lengths, various grouting materials and U-tube configurations on ground effective thermal conductivity. In this study, thermal response tests were conducted using a testing device with 9-different ground-loop heat exchangers. From the experimental results, the length of ground-loop heat exchanger affects to the effective thermal conductivity. Among the various grouting materials, the bentonite-based grout with silica sand shows the largest thermal conductivity value.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.776-781
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• 2008

A ground heat exchanger in a GSHP system is an important unit that determines the thermal performance of a system and its initial cost. The Size and performance of this heat exchanger is highly dependent on the thermal properties. A proper design requires certain site-specific parameters, most importantly the ground effective thermal conductivity, the borehole thermal resistance and the undisturbed ground temperature. This paper is part of a research project aiming at constructing a database of these site-specific properties, especially ground effective thermal conductivity. The objective was to develop and evaluation method, and to provide this knowledge to design engineers. To achieve these goals, thermal response tests were conducted using a testing device at nearly 150 locations in Korea. The in-situ thermal response is the temperature development over time when a known heating load imposed, e.g. by circulating a heat carrier fluid through the test exchangers. The line-source model was then applied to the response test data because of its simplicity. From the data analysis, the range of ground effective thermal conductivity at various sites is $1.5{\sim}4.0\;W$/mK. The results also show that the ground effective thermal conductivity varies with grouting materials as well as regional geological conditions and groundwater flow.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.614-623
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• 2008

This paper presents the results of a laboratory study on the thermal conductivity of and(silica, quartzite, limestone, sandstone, granite and two masonry sands)-water mixtures used for ground heat exchanger backfilling materials. Nearly 260 tests were performed in a thermal conductivity measuring system to characterize the relationships between the thermal conductivity of mixtures and the water content. The experimental results show hat the thermal conductivity of mixtures increases with increasing dry density and with increasing water content. The most widely used empirical prediction models for thermal conductivity of soils were found inappropriate to estimate the thermal conductivity of unsaturated sand-water mixtures. An improved model using an exponential relationship to compute the thermal conductivity of dry sands and empirical relationship to assess the normalized thermal conductivity of unsaturated sand-water mixtures is presented.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.493-500
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• 2006

This paper concerns the measurement of thermal conductivity of grouting materials for ground loop heat exchanger. A thermal conductivity meter, QTM-500 based on modified transient hot wire method was used to measure the thermal conductivity of neat bentonite and mixtures of bentonite and various additives. Relative to the total mixture mass, as the percent additive was increased the mixture thermal conductivity increased. For the bentonite-silica sand mixtures, the higher density of the sand particles resulted in much higher mixture thermal conductivity. The quartzite and silica sands produced the largest increases in mixture thermal conductivity, while common masonry and limestone sands produced lower thermal conductivity increases.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.769-775
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• 2008

The objective of this report is to determine the difference of thermal response that grouted two different materials, and compare the simulation result of the length of total ground heat exchanger length that using the ground thermal conductivity. And also to know heat exchange variation of ground heat exchanger temperature that measured with various test depth. The result shows that the test hole grouted with water permeable material got better thermal response than grouted with water impermeable material. However, with consideration of ingnore for the initial 12 hour data, the test hole grouted with impermeable material has larger thermal conductivity than the other. By former thermal conductivity, simulated data by engineering program shows only 3.4% difference or less. This result shows that ground thermal conductivity is not the main variables for the design program of ground heat exchanger. At the cooling or heating mode, base on the depth of -150m, the ground heat exchanger has best temperature at $-90{\sim}-60m$ and than getting worse because of entering water heat exchanged with leaving water in the same hole.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.600-603
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• 2009

We compared relative importance of thermal conductivity and initial ground temperature in designing borehole heat exchanger network and also we test accuracy of ground temperature estimation in thermal response test using a proven 3-D T-H modeler. The effect of error in estimating ground temperature on calculated total length of borehole heat exchanger was more than 3 times larger than the case of thermal conductivity in maximum 20% error range. Considering 10% of error in estimating thermal conductivity is generally acceptable, we have to define the initial ground temperature within 5% confidence level. Utilizing the mean annual ground surface temperature and the geothermal gradient map compiled so far can be a economic way of estimating ground temperature with some caution. When performing thermal response test for estimating ground temperature as well as measuring thermal conductivity, minimum 100 minutes of ambient circulation is required, which should be even more in case of very cold and hot seasons.