Performance Analysis of a Finned Pipe Earth Air Heat Exchanger

Earth air heat exchanger is a useful system to decrease or increase the air temperature with respect to the climatic and soil condition. The general aim of this work is to contribute towards performance analysis of earth air heat exchanger at various atmospheric conditions. The finned tube is considered as the effect of finned tube in heat transfer for cooling mode increases the thermal performance. The experimental result is compared simulation of experimental work. The atmospheric condition is obtained from the experimental condition is simulated in ANSYS Fluent R14.5. This atmospheric condition is for cooling mode of the inlet air. The atmospheric condition for this test is in month of June. This research on earth air heat exchanger consists of experimental and simulation solution. The average coefficient of performance from the experimental setup is 1.57. Experimental setup is constructed at the premises of JNTUH, Hyderabad having soil diffusivity of 0.84-2.3610^ (-6) m^2/s at depth of 5ft with 17 fins. It is observed that the increase in the length of the pipe reduces the temperature of the inlet air in cooling mode. The temperature decrease for a length of 1.2m varies from 1-3 C at velocity 6.5m/sec.