An Innovative Use of Renewable Ground Heat for Insulation in Low Exergy Building Systems

Forrest Meggers, Luca Baldini and Hansjürg Leibundgut
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Forrest Meggers: Singapore-ETH Centre, Future Cities Laboratory, Low Exergy Module, Singapore 118999, Singapore
Luca Baldini: ETH Zurich, Institute for Technology in Architecture, Building Systems, Zurich 8093, Switzerland
Hansjürg Leibundgut: ETH Zurich, Institute for Technology in Architecture, Building Systems, Zurich 8093, Switzerland

Energies, 2012, vol. 5, issue 8, 1-18

Abstract: Ground heat is a renewable resource that is readily available for buildings in cool climates, but its relatively low temperature requires the use of a heat pump to extract it for heating. We developed a system that uses low temperature ground heat directly in a building wall to reduce transmission heat losses. The Active Low Exergy Geothermal Insulation Systems (ALEGIS) minimizes exergy demand and maximizes the use of renewable geothermal heat from the ground. A fluid is pumped into a small pipe network in an external layer of a wall construction that is linked to a ground heat source. This decouples the building from the outside temperature, therefore eliminating large peak demands and reducing the primary energy demand. Our steady-state analysis shows that at a design temperature of ?10 °C the 6 cm thick active insulation system has equivalent performance to 11 cm of passive insulation. Our comparison of heating performance of a building with our active insulation system versus a building with static insulation of the same thickness shows a 15% reduction in annual electricity demand, and thus exergy input. We present an overview of the operation and analysis of our low exergy concept and its modeled performance.

Keywords: buildings; insulation; geothermal; ground heat; heat pumps; exergy (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: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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