Efficiency assessment of an earth-air heat exchanger system for passive cooling in three different regions: The Algerian case

Abstract

The energy consumption in buildings for heating and cooling continues to increase from year to year, in order to meet people's increased demand for thermal comfort. A key energy issue for the buildings sector, the largest consumer of energy, requires the rational use of traditional resources and the application of non-polluting, inexhaustible renewable energy technologies that allow sustainable development. The public authorities are currently showing a clear desire to reduce energy consumption in the buildings sector through various legislated thermal regulations. In Algeria, law 99-09 and executive decree 2000-09, followed by other regulations, have as objectives the control of energy and the introduction of energy efficiency in buildings. In this paper, we focused on the effectiveness of the earth-to-air heat exchanger system for cooling buildings in three different climate regions in Algeria. The Earth to air heat exchanger device is a promising technology for reducing or avoiding the use of air conditioning systems. The Earth to air heat exchanger system which exploits the thermal inertia of the soil puts two different temperature sources in thermal contact, the air which circulates in the tubes, and the ground placed in contact with the tubes. This model was validated to show a good agreement between simulated results and other experimental data published. The simulation results confirmed that A maximum energy gain of 2221.15 kWh, 523.56 kWh and 300.27 kWh over a cooling season can be reached for Timimoun, Djelfa, and Jijel.