Feasibility study and thermoeconomic analysis of cooling and heating systems using soil for a residential and greenhouse building

TL;DR

This study evaluates the feasibility and thermoeconomic performance of soil-based cooling and heating systems for residential and greenhouse buildings, highlighting their efficiency and cost advantages over conventional HVAC systems.

Contribution

It provides a detailed thermodynamic and economic analysis of soil air conditioning systems, including simulation results and performance comparisons across different cities in Iran.

Findings

Soil air conditioning systems outperform traditional HVAC in summer.

Reducing pipe diameter and increasing length improves system performance.

Soil cooling systems are more cost-effective than conventional HVAC.

Abstract

In the past decade, the use of renewable energy for heating and residential and greenhouse cooling structures has gained much interest due to the energy crisis, population growth, and the quantity of demand. This paper investigates heat transport and thermodynamic equations for a residential and greenhouse structure to simulate and examine the performance of a soil air conditioning system using fluid flow rate, pipe diameter, length, and fluid type features. The results show that the air-driven ventilation systems during summer outperform the rest of the HVAC systems. Moreover, decreasing the diameter and prolonging the pipeline positively affects the ventilation system's performance. In addition, the airflow rate positively correlates with our HVAC performance. We studied the performance of the air-conditioning systems in 4 cities in Iran. The Rasht's ventilation system is claimed to be the most effective for heating, and the Abadan cooling system showed outstanding results. We also compared the expenses of the soil cooling and conventional HVAC systems.