FEASIBILITY STUDY OF THE USE OF GROUND-COUPLED CONDENSERS IN INDUSTRIAL THERMAL MANAGEMENT

A closed loop cooling system that uses the earth as a heat sink to dissipate heat for the energy system's thermal management is described. The proposed cooling approach employs a concentric tube heat exchanger situated above ground to transfer heat from the system (e.g., power plant condenser) to a separate cooling water loop buried at a specified depth below ground. A parametric study was performed to evaluate the efficacy of the thermal management potential of ground-coupled systems in industrial applications. It revealed that such a condenser design is generally capable of dissipating less than 1.5 MW of heat. A mathematical model is developed to size the required piping for different systems.