An experimental study on the soil-based natural cooling

Abstract

The increase in energy costs has made it necessary to use more efficient devices and systems. Environmental pollution as the result of using fossil fuels and global warming are further factors leading to this necessity. Today, there is an increasing awareness that the continuous growth in energy consumption and depletion of energy resources lead to a serious energy shortage and pollution. In this study, cooling of an indoor area by an ecological, low-cost system via soil-based natural cooling is presented. Although there are similar systems in the literature, they are based on dry soil applications. The present system differs from those in so far that it is based on a wet soil application. For the installation and experiments, 80 m(2) area was used in Sakarya, Turkey. An artificial pond has been set up for the installation of a horizontal ground heat exchanger (GHE). The submerged GHE has been examined experimentally. It has been observed that the proposed cooling system reduces the energy costs required for cooling in the summer months.