Earth–air tunnel heat exchanger for building space conditioning: a critical review

Abstract

India is one of the largest developing countries across the world, and currently, real estate sector (in residential and commercial building’s area) is growing approximately by 10% annually. The energy demand is increasing in space heating and cooling field because of not only on the growing real estate but also due to high variation between peak seasonal temperatures. The passive heating and cooling system play an important role to meet such energy demand. Earth–air tunnel heat exchanger (EATHE) is one of the passive systems, which utilizes the undisturbed earth temperature to heat and cool the buildings. Authors feel its importance for space heating and cooling of the building, and rigorously reviewed the energy conservation aspect of EATHE. The mathematical modeling, optimization and economic viability are presented in this article. The review also focuses on the design and layout of EATHE for a residential building.