• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.707-712
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• 2006

Knowing the ground thermal conductivity is very importnat in designing ground heat exchangers. Knowledge of the ground soil and rock composition information dose not guarantee the prediction of accurate thermal information. In Situ testing of ground heat exchangers is becoming popular. However, in situ testing are performed at construction sites in real life. Adequate data collection and analysis are not easy mainly due to poor power quality. Power fluctuation also causes the fluctuation of received data. The power quality must be maintained during the entire in situ testing processes. To accurately analyse the test data, the understanding of the response of the power fluctuation is essential. Testing under the power quality varied by tester is very difficult. Analyzing power variation by numerical simulation is a realistic option. By varying power in a sinosuidal manner, its effects on predicting thermal conductivity from thermal response plots made from the test data are examined.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.196.1-196.1
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• 2011

In this study, a test bed was constructed in order to evaluate thermal efficiency of the energy pile which carries out combined roles of a structural foundation and of a heat exchanger. The energy pile in this study is designed as a large-diameter drilled shaft equipped with the heat exchange pipes which configures a W-shape and an S-shape. The drilled shaft reached to the depth of 60 m whilst the heat exchange pipes were installed to about 30 m deep from the ground surface. The W-shaped and S-shaped heat exchange pipes were installed in the opposite sections of the same drilled shaft. In-situ thermal response tests were performed for both the shapes of heat exchange pipes. To avoid underestimating the thermal performance due to hydration heat of concrete inside the drilled shaft, the in-situ thermal response tests for the energy pile were performed after four weeks since the installation of the energy pile.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.173-182
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• 2005

The Performance of U-tube ground heat exchanger for geothermal heat Pump systems depends on the thermal properties of the soil, as well as grout or backfill materials in the borehole. In-situ tests provide a means of estimating some of these properties. In this study, in-situ thermal response tests were completed on two vertical boreholes, 130 m deep with 62 mm diameter high density polyethylene U-tubes. The tests were conducted by adding a monitored amount of heat to water over a $17\~18$ hour period for each vertical boreholes. By monitoring the water temperatures entering and exiting the loop and heat load, overall thermal conductivity values of grout/soil formation were determined. Two parameter estimation models for evaluation of thermal response test data were compared when applied on the same temperature response data. One model is based on line-source theory and the other is a numerical one-dimensional finite difference model. The average thermal conductivity deviation between measured data and these models is of the magnitude $1\%$ to $5\%$.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.427-432
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• 2005

This study treats the advantage of in situ line source method measuring the heat transfer capacity of a borehole, using mobile equipment, to determine the thermal properties of the entire borehole system such as thermal conductivity, diffusiveity. volumetric heat capacity, and borehole thermal resistance. The results from the response test include not only the thermal properties of the ground and the borehole, but also conditions that are difficult to estimate, e,g. natural convection in the boreholes, asymmetry in the construction, etc. In this study, 1) theoretical in situ methods for assessing working fluid temperature variation in V-type PE tube have been introduced, and 2) TRTE(Thermal Response Test Equipment) has been built based on these kinds of theoretical in situ methods. Basically TRTE consists of a pump, a heater and temperature sensors for measuring the inlet and outlet temperatures of the borehole. In order to make equipment easily transportable it is set up on a small trailer. Since the response test takes above two days to execute, the test was fully automatic in recording measured data using Labview DAS(Data acquisition system) program. The test was demonstrated in the course of intensive research in this field through the one site at Ulsan city in Korea. From this kind of thermal properties test of borehole systems in situ, the design of the borehole system can be optimized regarding the total geological, hydro-geological and technical conditions at the location.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.512-520
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• 2007

The design of a ground-source heat pump system includes specifications for a ground loop heat exchanger where the heat transfer rate depends on the effective thermal conductivity of the ground and the effective thermal resistance of the borehole. To evaluate these heat transfer properties, in-situ thermal response tests on four vertical test boreholes with different grouting materials were conducted by adding a monitored amount of heat to circulating water. The line-source method is applied to the temperature rise in an in-situ test and extended to also give an estimate of borehole effective thermal resistance. The effect of increasing thermal conductivity of the grouting materials from 0.818 to $1.104W/m^{\circ}C$ resulted in overall increases in effective thermal conductivity by 15.8 to 56.3% and reductions in effective thermal resistance by 13.0 to 31.1%.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.122.2-122.2
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• 2010

Knowledge of ground thermal properties is most important for the proper design of BHE(borehole heat exchanger) systems. The configure type, pipe size and thermal performance of the BHE is highly dependent on the ground source heatpump system-efficiency and instruction cost. Thermal response tests with mobile measurement devices were developed primarily for in-situ determination of design data for Standing Column Well apply. The main purpose has been to determine in-situ values of effective ground thermal conductivity and thermal resistance, including the effect of ground-water flow and natural convection in the boreholes. The test rig is set up on a some trailer, and contains a sub-circulation pump, a boiler, temperature sensors, flow meter and a data logger for recording the temperature and circulation fluid flow data. A constant heating power is injected into the SCW through the test rig and the resulting temperature change in the SCW is recorded. The recorded temperature data are analysed with a line-source model, which gives the effective in-situ values of rock thermal conductivity and thermal resistance of SCW.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.3371-3376
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• 2007

The design of a ground-source heat pump system includes specifications for a ground loop heat exchanger where the heat transfer rate depends on the thermal conductivity of the ground. To evaluate this heat transfer property, in-situ thermal response tests on four vertical test boreholes with different grouting materials were conducted by adding a monitored amount of heat to water over various test lengths. By measuring the water temperatures entering and exiting the loop, water flow rate, and heat load, effective thermal conductivity values of the ground were determined. The effect of increasing thermal conductivity of grouting materials from 0.82 to 1.05 W/m$^{\circ}C$ resulted in overall increases in effective ground thermal conductivity by 25.8% to 69.5%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.229-239
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• 2010

Performing a series of in-situ thermal response tests, the effective thermal conductivity of six vertical closed-loop ground heat exchangers was experimentally evaluated and compared each other, which were constructed in a test bed in Wonju. To compare thermal efficiency of the ground heat exchangers in field, the six boreholes were constructed with different construction conditions: grouting materials (cement vs. bentonite), different additives (silica sand vs. graphite) and the shape of pipe-sections (general U-loop type vs. 3 pipe-type). From the test results, it can be concluded that cement grouting has a higher effective thermal conductivity than that of bentonite grouting, and the efficiency of graphite better performs over silica sand as a thermally-enhancing addictive. In addition, a new 3 pipe-type heat exchanger provides less thermal interference between the inlet and outlet pipe than the conventional U-loop type heat exchanger, which results in superior thermal performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.325-335
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• 2010

A new geothermal energy source obtained from a tunnel structure has been studied in this paper. The geothermal energy is extracted through a textile-type ground heat exchanger named "Energy Textile" that is installed between a shotcrete layer and a guided drainage geotexitle. A test bed was constructed in an abandoned railway tunnel to verify the geothermal heat exchanger system performed by the energy textile. To evaluate the applicability of the energy textile, we measured the thermal conductivity of shotcrete and lining samples which were prepared in accordance with a common mixture design. An overall performance of the energy textile installed in the test bed was evaluated by carrying out a series of in-situ thermal response test. In addition, a 3-D finite volume analysis (FLUENT) was adopted to simulate the operation of the ground heat exchanger being encased in the energy textile with the consideration of the effect of the shotcrete and lining thermal conductivity.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.31 no.B
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• pp.27-36
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• 2011

In this paper, the applicability of cement grout has been studied as an alternative to bentonite grout for backfill ground heat exchangers. To provide an optimal mixture design, the thermal conductivity of cement grout and bentonite grout with various mixture ratios were experimentally evaluated and compared. Numerical analyses using Fluent(FVM program) were applied to compare the thermal transfer efficiency of the cement grout with that of the bentonite grout used in the construction. Also the effective ground thermal conductivity was measured by In-situ thermal response test. The results showed that the thermal efficiency of the cement grout was better than the bentonite grout. Consequently, the cement grout could be an alternative with more thermal efficiency to bentonite grout for ground heat exchangers.