• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.168.2-168.2
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• 2010

The growing market for geothermal heat pump system requires great consideration of quality control and assurance in design and construction. The borehole heat exchanger of GHP system should be sustainable, economical and ecological. Thermal Response Test (TRT) is a useful method for site investigation to obtain reliable data for a optimal system design from the technical and economical aspect. Intensive researches combined with exchange of experiences on an international level within the IEA ECES Annex 21 improved the technology. Major subjects on the interpretation of TRT are development of improved evaluation models, evaluation of the TRT with respect to geological layers and investigation of the influence of ground water. Current status of TRT in South Korea, as well as a new version of the Korean TRT standard test procedure was presented. TRT is mostly used for governmental supported projects with corresponds to more than 100 GCHP systems per year. More than 200 tests are applied, mostly on single U-tube heat exchangers (about 95%). Bentonite is the most common grouting to be used. KIGAM (Korea Institute of Geoscience & Mineral Resources) is also keeping a GIS geological and geothermal database. In the institute also laboratory measurements of rock properties are carried out. About 90% of the laboratory measurements of the rock heat conductivity shows higher values than the in-situ TRT.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.195.2-195.2
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• 2011

The borehole heat exchanger of Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP) system should be sustainable and cost effective for long term operation. To guaranty the performance of the system thermal Response Tests (TRTs) with simple recommended procedures have been applied in many countries. Korea government developed a standard TRT procedure in order to control the quality on GHP projects. In the TRT procedure interpretation method has a rule that data set has to be interpreted by the line source model(LSM). The LSM employes some assumptions that surrounding medium is homogeneous and the line source is infinite and constant heat flux, however real ground condition is unisotropic and heterogeneous, and showing regional or local ground water flows in many cases. We need to develope improved evaluation models to estimate accurate ground thermal conductivity with respect to geological and influence of ground water because current TRT standard test procedure has limitations to be applied for every locations and system. This study surveyed the uncertainty of the thermal parameters from the interpretation method considering different evaluation period. The interpretation of 208 TRT data sets represents limitations of LSM application that some obtained ground thermal conductivities are statistically unstable and convergence time of ground thermal conductivity over test period shows trends responding the length of test period. This evaluation study will be helpful to provide some effective procedure for the thermal parameter estimation and to complement current TRT standard procedure.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.389-398
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• 2013

Studies of the thermal properties of various rock types obtained from several locations in Korea have revealed significant differences in thermal conductivities in the thermal response test (TRT), which has been applied to the design of a ground-source heat pump system. In the present study, we aimed to compare the thermal conductivities of the samples with those obtained by TRT. The thermal conductivities of soil and rock samples were 1.32W/m-K and 2.88 W/m-K, respectively. In comparison, the measured TRT value for thermal conductivity was 3.13W/m-K, which is 10% higher than that of the rock samples. We consider that this difference may be due to groundwater flow because abundant groundwater is present in the study area and has a hydraulic conductivity of 0.01. It is natural to consider that the object of TRT is to calculate the original thermal conductivity of the ground, following the line source theory. Therefore, we conclude that the TRT applied to a domestic standing column type well is not suitable for a line source theory. To solve these problems, values of thermal conductivity measured directly from samples should be used in the design of ground-source heat pump systems.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2381-2384
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• 2008

The heat exchange between the Borehole Heat Exchanger(BHE) and the surrounding ground depends directly on ground thermal conductivity k at the certain site. The k is thus a key parameter in designing BHE and coupled geothermal heat pump systems. Currently, although a thermal hydraulic Response Test(TRT) is mostly used in practice, the thermal hydraulic TRT needs additional power and is generally time-consuming. A new, simple wireless probe for hi-speed k determination was introduced in this paper. This technique using a wireless probe is less time-consuming and requires no external source of energy for measurement and predicts local thermal properties by measuring soil temperatures along the depth. Measured temperature data along the depth was analyzed. As a result, the electronic wireless probe can replace the conventional hydraulic TRT method after carrying out the additional research on a lot of local heat flow, etc.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.39-44
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• 2008

The heat exchange between the Borehole Heat Exchanger(BHE) and the surrounding ground depends directly on ground thermal conductivity k at the certain site. The k is thus a key parameter in designing BHE and coupled geothermal heat pump systems. Currently, although a thermal hydraulic response test(TRT) is mostly used in practice, the thermal hydraulic TRT needs additional power and is generally time-consuming. A new, simple wireless P/T probe for a hi-speed k determination was introduced in this paper. This technique using a wireless P/T probe is less time-consuming and requires no external source of energy for measurement and predicts local thermal properties by measuring soil temperatures along the depth. Measured temperature data along the depth was analyzed. In order to verify the new technique for the determination of ground thermal conductivity, ground thermal conductivity k that calculated from the measured temperature data using a wireless P/T probe was compared with one obtained from conventional hydraulic TRT. When comparing the average k of two methods, the relative error was approximately 10%. As a result, the electronic TRT can replace the conventional hydraulic TRT method after carrying out the additional research on a lot of sites.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.5-15
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• 2012

In this study, a series of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) numerical analyses were performed in order to evaluate the thermal performance of six full-scale closed-loop vertical ground heat exchangers constructed in a test bed located in Wonju. The circulation HDPE pipe, borehole and surrounding ground formation were modeled using FLUENT, a finite-volume method (FVM) program, for analyzing the heat transfer process of the system. Two user-defined functions (UDFs) accounting for the difference in the temperatures of the circulating inflow and outflow fluid and the variation of the surrounding ground temperature with depth were adopted in the FLUENT model. The relevant thermal properties of materials measured in laboratory were used in the numerical analyses to compare the thermal efficiency of various types of the heat exchangers installed in the test bed. The simulation results provide a verification for the in-situ thermal response test (TRT) data. The CFD numerical back-analysis with the ground thermal conductivity of 4 W/mK yielded better agreement with the in-situ thermal response tests than with the ground thermal conductivity of 3 W/mK.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.24-30
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• 2016

Vertical and standing column well ground heat exchangers have mostly been installed for ground source heat pump systems (GSHP) and thermal response tests (TRT) have been applied to evaluate the thermal characteristics for these heat exchangers. In this paper, the TRT coupled with a line source method was applied to evaluate the thermal characteristics of the horizontal ground heat exchanger (HGHX). Load tests of a HGHX were also performed to examine the daily variations of the ground and fluid temperatures associated with the daily intermittent operation of GSHP. For this test, the straight HGHX (depth 2 m, length 50 m, 8 line) was installed in Ansan city. The results showed that the variations of ground thermal conductivity of HGHX during one year were relatively small with the range of $1.43{\sim}1.64W/m{\cdot}K$, and the maximum and minimum values appeared in December and May, respectively. Load tests with heat injection rate of 6.0 kW for 10 hours per day to HGHX during twelve days were performed in June, September and December, and resulted in a ground initial temperature rise of $4.31^{\circ}C$, $3.14^{\circ}C$, and $1.21^{\circ}C$ during these days, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.5-14
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• 2016

The use of geothermal energy has increased for economically and environmentally friendly utilization, and a geothermal heat pump (GSHP) system for space heating and cooling is being used widely. As ground thermal properties such as ground thermal conductivity and ground thermal diffusivity are substantial parameters in the design of geothermal heat pump system, ground thermal conductivity should be obtained from in-situ thermal response test (TRT). This paper presents an experimental study of ground thermal properties of U and 2U type ground heat exchangers (GHEs) measured by TRTs. The U and 2U type GHEs were installed in a partially saturated dredged soil deposit, and TRTs were conducted for 48 hours. A method to derive the thermal diffusivity as well as thermal conductivity was proposed from a non-linear regression analysis. In addition, remolded soil samples from different layers were collected from the field, and soil specimens were reconstructed according to the field ground condition. Then equivalent ground thermal conductivity and ground thermal diffusivity were calculated from the lab test results and they were compared with the in-situ TRT results.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.93-99
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• 2014

Use of geothermal energy has been increased for its economical application and environmentally friendly utilization. Particularly, for energy piles, a spiral coil type ground heat exchanger (GHE) is more preferred than line type GHEs such as U and W shaped GHEs. A PHC energy pile with spiral coil type GHE was installed in an area of partially saturated dredged soil deposit, and a thermal response test (TRT) was conducted for 240 hours under a continuous operation condition. Besides, remolded soil samples from different layers were collected in the field, and soil specimens were reconstructed according to the field ground condition. Non-steady state probe methods were conducted in the lab, and ground thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity were measured for the different soil layers. An equivalent ground thermal conductivity was calculated from the lab test results and it was compared with the field TRT result. The difference was less than 5%, which advocates the use of an equivalent ground thermal conductivity for the multi-layered ground. Furthermore, this paper also represents an equivalent ground thermal diffusivity evaluation method which is another very important design parameter.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.65-73
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• 2013

Ground-coupled heat pump system has attracted attention as a promising renewable energy technology due to its improving energy efficiency and eco-friendly mechanism for space cooling and heating. Pipes buried in the ground play a role of direct thermal interaction between circulating fluid inside the pipe and surrounding soils in the geothermal exchange system. However, both complexities of turbulent flow coupling thermal-hydraulic phenomena and very long aspect ratio of the pipe make it difficult to model the heat exchange system directly. Energy balance for fluid flow inside the pipe was derived to model thermal-hydraulic phenomena, and one-dimensional pipe element was proposed through Galerkin formation and time integration of the equation. Developed element is combined to pre-developed FEM code for THM phenomena in porous media. Numerical results of Thermal Response Test showed that line-source model overestimates equivalent thermal conductivity of surrounding soils due to thermal interaction between adjacent pipes and finite length of the pipe. Thus, inverse analysis for the TRT simulation was conducted to present optimal transformation matrix with utmost convergence.