ON THE PERFORMANCE OF BUILDINGS COUPLED WITH EARTH TO AIR HEAT-EXCHANGERS

The use of earth to air heat exchangers has gained an increasing accep tance during the recent years. However, there is a lack of calculation models coupling the performance of the exchangers with the building. The present paper deals with the development of a new integrated metho d to calculate the contribution of the earth to air heat exchangers to reduce the cooling load of the buildings. The method is based on the principle of balance point temperature and permits the calculation of the hourly value of the balance temperature of the building as well as the daily cooling load of the building and the contribution of the bu ried pipes. An extensive validation procedure has been followed using data from an extended version of TRNSYS including detailed routines to simulate dynamically the performance of earth to air heat exchangers. It is found that the method is of sufficient accuracy and, therefore, can be used during the predesign and design phase for the dimensionin g of the buried pipes.