Ground Source Heat Pumps (GHSPs) is a relevant application and around 3 million installations are setting up at the beginning of 2010 (IEA ECES Annex 21). The improvements in GSHPs are currently focused on the optimization of the system and the reduction of costs installations. The thermal conductivity of the ground and thermal resistance of the Borehole Heat Exchanger (BHE) are important design parameters for Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) systems.
The Thermal Response Test (TRT), which has been used up to now in the GHE design, only allows estimating mean values for thermal conductivity of the surrounding ground and borehole resistance. However, the ground thermal conductivity and borehole thermal resistance may present local variation along the borehole depth.
For improving conventional TRT, the optical fiber technology is applied to collect information about the temperature profiles in the borehole. Thermal Response Test (TRT) logs the inlet and outlet fluid temperatures; meanwhile, the Distributed Thermal Response Test (DTRT) carries out a profile of the temperature along the borehole depth, in this case with fiber optic cables.
This project focuses on the comparison and analysis of DTRT measurements in a U-pipe borehole in order to estimate the thermal conductivity and the borehole thermal resistance along the borehole. The comparison and the analysis are carried out by:
• Comparing the differences of TRT results depending on the heat power rate considered – constant and by steps.
• Comparing the results from two different resolution Distributed Test Sensing (DTS) equipments: Halo and Sentinel DTS.
• Comparing the differences of TRT results as depending on the analytical procedure based on the line source theory: line source model and line source approximation.
Source: Linnaeus University
Author: Gallardo Salas, Carlos | Extremera Sánchez, Adrián
