Design and Analysis of an Application of Geo-Exchange Cooling System in Malaysia

• Main Author: Hendry Hadi bin Hassan, Hendry Hadi
• Format: Final Year Project
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2009
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/666/

The purpose of this project is to design a Geo-Exchange Cooling System (GECS) for application in Malaysia. It will cover the research, design, calculations and simulations to prove the feasibility of the system. Theoretically, the GECS utilizes earth or other large bodies such as river or lake as a medium to reject heat. Current air conditioning systems reject heat to the ambient, which will result in high energy consumption and produce harmful effect to the environment. This study is to overcome that problem by rejecting the heat into the earth, which has a lower temperature compared to the ambient. By doing so, the compressor work and the harmful effect to the environment will be reduced significantly. This theory is proven by the analysis and calculation based on thermodynamics concept of a vapor compression refrigerant cycle. From the calculation, it is proven that, by rejecting heat to a lower temperature region will result in the reduction of the compressor work. The geo-exchange loop configuration advantages and disadvantages are also discussed, the best configuration is chosen, and the analysis is done. This report also includes the cooling load calculations, thermodynamic calculation, heat exchanger design calculation, and the calculation to determine the correct power of pump to be used. The project will be a success with proper planning, research, implementations. It utilizes engineering software such as AutoCAD, CATIA and Matlab to model and simulate the design. The output of this project will benefit people in the residential area, and also for industrial sector in terms of power savings.