Study of Thermal Inertia in the Subsoil Adjacent to a Civil Engineering Laboratory for a Ground-Coupled Heat Exchanger

Raúl Antonio Gutiérrez-Durán, Luciano. A. Cervantes, Dagoberto López López, Juan Peralta-Jaramillo, Emerita Delgado-Plaza, Guido Abril-Macias, Pablo Limon-Leyva and Ian Sosa-Tinoco ()
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Raúl Antonio Gutiérrez-Durán: Department of Civil Engineering, Technological Institute of Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85130, Mexico
Luciano. A. Cervantes: Department of Civil Engineering, Technological Institute of Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85130, Mexico
Dagoberto López López: Department of Civil Engineering, Technological Institute of Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85130, Mexico
Juan Peralta-Jaramillo: Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, CDTS-FIMCP, Campus Gustavo Galindo Km, Guayaquil 090112, Ecuador
Emerita Delgado-Plaza: Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, CDTS-FIMCP, Campus Gustavo Galindo Km, Guayaquil 090112, Ecuador
Guido Abril-Macias: Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, CDTS-FIMCP, Campus Gustavo Galindo Km, Guayaquil 090112, Ecuador
Pablo Limon-Leyva: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological Institute of Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85130, Mexico
Ian Sosa-Tinoco: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Technological Institute of Sonora, Ciudad Obregón 85130, Mexico

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-22

Abstract: This document presents a study of thermal inertia in the subsoil adjacent to the Civil Engineering laboratory of the Technological Institute of Sonora (ITSON) in the south of Sonora, Mexico, in service of the development of a solution proposal of a ground-coupled air heat exchanger for the cooling months. The research was divided into three phases: first, the monitoring of temperature in 10 layers of the ground; second, the analysis of thermal ground properties; and last, the design and simulation of a ground-coupled air heat exchanger. The objectives were to determine the variation in the thermal inertia of the soil with depth and over time and to determine the optimum depth for a ground-coupled heat exchanger system. The second objective was to develop a design proposal for a ground-coupled heat exchanger for the university laboratory. We found that the optimum depth is 3.0 m in a soil with high-compressibility clay with 21% humidity and 0.152 W/mK of thermal conductivity. However, the proposed design identified the best depth for the cooling system as 3 m considering a ground-coupled heat exchanger for a volume of 222.2 m 3 , corresponding to the volume of the classrooms of the building. With this design, the approach was to reduce the temperature by at least 10 °C on the hottest day (41 °C) of the year studied. We concluded that with this kind of system, the climate of the building studied could reduce the thermal load of active AC systems and reduce the energy load by 59%.

Keywords: air–earth heat interchanger; thermal comfort; thermal conductivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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