Optimization of Earth Air Tube Heat Exchanger for Cooling Application Using Taguchi Technique

Abstract

Earth air tube heat exchanger (EATHE) is one of the passive technologies which utilize the earth stored heat (renewable energy) for heating/cooling the buildings. EATHE releases heat to earth for cooling space in summer, making the earth a heat sink and extracts earth-stored energy for heating space in winter and makes the earth a heat source. This paper optimizes the Length of the ground heat exchanger and overall heat transfer coefficient of earth air heat exchanger using the Taguchi technique for cooling application. For this purpose, we select six factors such as installation depth of Pipe (A), Pipe's inner diameter (B), Thermal conductivity of pipe material (C), Inlet air temperature (D), Outlet air temperature (E), Inlet air velocity (F). All these factors are taken at three levels, and we select an L27 orthogonal array for experimental runs. The ground heat exchanger's Length and the overall heat transfer coefficient were then calculated for each experimental run. In the Taguchi method, we find the signal to noise ratio for an optimal combination of all six factors and ANOVA to find the order of influencing parameters and their percentage contributions for both the objective parameters. According to our results, the best combination for all the six factors for ground heat exchanger length and overall heat transfer coefficient were A1B1C3D1E3F1 and A2B3C2D3E1F3, respectively. The highest and lowest influencing factors for ground heat exchanger length were the pipe's inner diameter and the pipe's installation depth with their contribution factors of 69.12 and 0.32%, respectively. In contrast, the highest and lowest influencing factors for the overall heat transfer coefficient were the pipe's inner diameter and thermal conductivity of pipe material with their contribution factors of 75.97and 0%, respectively. Hence the order of influence of all the six factors for both the objective parameters was BEFDCA.