• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.20-27
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• 2009

The effect of borehole thermal resistance on the borehole length is studied. In performing this work a new concept BLRR(borehole length reduction rate) is developed based on the line source model. The solution of line source model is shown to be valid through the comparison with the data of thermal response test. It is shown that BLRR is a function of soil thermal conductivity(k) and borehole thermal resistance($R_b$). The value of BLRR increases with increasing k, which means reducing $R_b$ is more effective when k is high. The reduction of borehole length with change of $R_b$ is easily estimated with BLRR. The validity of BLRR is also examined with EED analysis.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.296-300
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• 2004

Performance evaluation and economic estimation were conducted on the water to water GSHP (Ground Source Heat Pump) installed in existing building. Ground heat exchanger was a closed vertical loop type and sized to be 5 boreholes and 100m depth per borehole. Operation efficiency of the system shows that, COP increased from 3.0 to 4.2 with entering water temperature in heating operation, however, COP decreased from 5.0 to 3.7 in cooling operation. Economic estimation was analyzed by LCC (Life Cycle Cost) method and it showed that GSHP could save 68% of cost compare to the conventional oil source. Thus, despite of the large amount of initial cost, GSHP has a economic advantage to the other energy sources.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.1638-1646
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• 2008

This paper presents a series of numerical simulations on the thermal performance and sectional efficiency of a closed-loop vertical ground heat exchanger (U-loop) equipped in a geothermal heat pump system (GHP). A 2-D finite element analysis, ANSYS, was employed to evaluate the temperature distribution on the borehole cross section involving HDPE pipe/grout/soil formation to compare the sectional efficiency between the conventional U-loop and a new latticed HDPE pipe system which is equipped with a thermally insulating latice in order to reduce thermal interference between the inflow and outflow pipes. In addition, a 3-D finite volume analysis (Fluent) was used to simulate the operating process of the closed-loop vertical ground heat exchanger by considering the effect of grout's thermal properties, rate of circulation pump, distance between the inflow and outflow pipes, and the effectiveness of the latticed HDPE pipe system. It was observed that the thermal interference between the two strands of U-loop is of importance in determining the efficiency of the ground heat exchanger, and thus it is highly recommendable to modify the cross section configuration of the conventional U-loop system by including a thermally insulating latice between the two strands.