Herrr ßåãî ñåã> Systems t8 CH P Vol. 9, No. 5, ðð. 407-4 10, 1989 0890-4332/89 $3.00 + .

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Prtnted in Great Britain Pergamon Press pic

Í ÅÀ Ò PI PE Í Å À Ò ST O R A G E P E R F O R M A N C E

À . CARvso,' L . Ð. Î êëêî ÷ ñí , R. PASQvETTI' and Ü. Ü. × À31ÛÅ×

À .× . 1.uikov Heat and Ì àçü T ransfer Institute of the BSSR, Academy î Ã Sciences, M insk, U .S.S.R,

(Recei ved 2 January 1989)

Abstract — Heat storage î ëåãà essential thermal energy saving Ãî ã heating. À ground heat store equipped
with heat pipes connecting it with à heat source àï 4 user is considered in the paper. I t has been shown
that such à heat exchanging system along with à batch energy source meets, to à considerable extent, house
heating requirements.

N O M EN C L A T U R E
temperature
radius
heat fl ux
heat fl ux density
thermal resistance
length
diameter
heat transfer coefl tcient
time
Subscrip ts
å evaporator
ñ condenser
hp heat pipe
com common
åõ external
1 input
î output

I N T ROD UCT I ON
M odern house heating systems are designed for effi cient energy expenditure, use of alternative
sources such as the sun, heat of ground and ground water, and so on. Heat storage during its
excessive supply with subsequent delivery to the user during periods of energy defi cit is one of the
ways for its effi cient expenditure. The sizes, construction and heat storage means of materials used
depend, in the fi rst instance, on the designated purpose and operating conditions of the installation.
The âî -called ground stores are most often used to supply heat to apartments and greenhouses.
The store is à hydro-insulated tank, located most often under à house and charged with dry sand
or pebbles. Heat is supplied to, or removed from the store via pipelines with water or air pumped
through. Store charging and discharging, as well as reduction of its hydraulic resistance, can
eff ectively be realized with heat pipes (HPs) providing reversible heat transfer when in à horizontal
position. In this ñàçå, the reliability of the installation increases as well, since individual heat pipes
are operated independently.

N U M ERI CA L A N A LY SI S A N D EX PERI M ENT A L RESU L T S

The present work is aimed at calculating the parameters î Ã the Í Ð heat store in the heating
system supplied with solar heat.
In the solar system water is expected to be à working fl uid, air is used in the heater with gr ~
ground or pebbles compose the storage material. The store is charged during the day an
discharged at night . The Í Ð heat store is schematically shown in Fig. 1.

' U niversite 4å Provence, I nst i tu t U niver sit aire des System es, T herm iq ues I ndu str iels, M arseille, F rance.

407
408 À . Ñëû ë î el al .

F ig . 1. Schem atic of the heat p ip e heat sto re.

The heat pipe is set in the store horizontally, i.e. the âàò å HP zone can be an evaporator or
condenser during the day. Both gas and water can be pumped via the heat exchanger located in
the HP section protruding from the store.
The operating H P conditions depend on its location in the store (on the edge, in the middle, in
the corner). A s an example, the paper considers à heat pipe positioned near one of the store walls.
The two-dimensional heat conduction problem for à fi nite volume has been solved by the boundary
element method [ 1]. The calculation algorithm and the program for the heat conduction problem
solution using this method have been developed at the Universite de Provence, M arseilles.
The initial and boundary conditions were: r = 0; Ò = Ò, ; ã = r, ; q, = è,(Ò, — T); r = r, ;
q~—è, (Ò, — T); r = r, ; q, = Î . Temperature variations of the heating and heated media with time
are presented in Fig. 2à. Temperatures at the spatial grid nodes shown in Fig. 2Ü are determined
due to numerical solution of the problem.
The heat store is charged for 8 h by water heated, å.g. to 70' Ñ, by à solar installation, while the
stored energy is used for 12 h to heat the air arriving at the heat exchanger at 15' Ñ. Twice à day,
the temperature profi le is reconstructed over 2 h. For âèñÜ an interpretation, it proved most
convenient, in numerical calculations, to divide time intervals into 2 h fractions.
The following geometric and operating parameters have been chosen for the calculations: è, =
0.5 W (mÐ'Ê ) ' ; ñ~„, = 30, 60, 100 ò ò ; L = 0.3, 0.7, 1 ò ; L, = 1 ò ; L, = 5 m; Ë, = 0.35 W (mK ) ' ;
ññ, = 1200 W (m~K ) ' ; è, = 3000 W (m~Ê ) - ' , è,„, = 300 W (m~K ) ' ; è,„, = 20 W (m~K )
The total thermal resistance of the heat transfer system heating medium— heat pipe— store, based
on à unit length of the heat pipe evaporator, can be presented in the form:

Í åãå, n is the f i r m
i n coeffi cient of the external heat pipe condenser wall.
The main calculation results are given in Figs 3—6. We expect that the time taken to achieve the
steady saturation state, power characteristics and possible temperature level are basic parameters
responsible for the performance of the storage system.
Figure 3 highlights the characteristic transient time of the steady state determined by the balance
of supplied and consumed energies and losses through heat insulation. It is obvious that the ground
store, due to its low thermal conductivity, is rather an inertial device and the time taken to achieve
the steady st ate, dependent on the H P dimensions and location, is ï î less than 10 days, and can
be 40 or more days. The eff ect of the HP diameter is much weaker. Such à situation typifi es heat
propagation in the ground.
Figure 4 furnishes power characteristics of the heat storage system when the energy is used for
air heating. In the dependence Q(d» ), the distance between HPs is assumed to be 0.7 ò .
 H eat pipe heat st orage per fo rm ance 409

d a o { m m >

Å
ë

î 0.5 i uv

L, ì L (m)
ig. 3. O perating dynam ics of t he heat sto r age syst em vs Fig. 4. Power characteristics î Ã the heat storage system,
heat p ipe d iameter and d istance between t hem . charging; - - - - - discharging.

I t is worth emphasizing the åÊåñ1 of the diameter of the H Ps used. Í åãå, the energy transferred
by the heat pipes is in fact directly proportional to the evaporator diameter, due to 1î ÷ thermal
conductivity of the storage material. The picture is reversed as the distance between the heat pipes
increases, though the curve is rather fl at. In the çàò å fi gure, along with the energy discharged, the
dependence on the energy charged into the store is plotted. The growth of the energy spent with
increasing distance between the heat pipes is attributed to essentially lower thermal resistance of
the entire heat storage system in à state of charging, as compared to the discharge conditions.
Temperature variations over 24 h are given for most typical system points, i.e. on the heat pipe
surface, in the store and at its boundary. I n the ñàçå of very strong heat pipe temperature
dependence on its operating conditions, the day-long temperature fl uctuations of the storage are
much weaker because of its low thermal conductivity.
In the case of weak T(d) dependence (curve 1), the temperature is à strong function of the
distance between the heat pipes (curve 2) and decreases from 45 to 34' Ñ over the range of L under
consideration. Temperature variations on the heat pipe surface under steady state store discharge
are less essential (curve 3).
From the data in Fig. 4, the mean energy transferred by the heat pipe is about 200 W h m ' .
A ssuming that the storage is à parallelepipedon 6 õ 5 õ 2 m tank with ten 6 m long heat pipes 1 m
apart, each pipe transfers about 100 W power each discharge interval. A s follows from Fig. 6, the
heat pipe surface temperature is 30' Ñ (because of great geometric dimensions and small heat fl uxes
transferred, the temperature drop inside the pipe being negligible). Heat capacity of the total mean
heat consumption in the store is about 2 kW . A ssuming the day mean effi ciency of the solar water
heating installation of 0.4, which is quite realistic [2], and the mean incident solar radiation intensity

~î 20
ò, d ay

Ñ Transient storage operation one, point 2; operation 2, point 12; operation 3, point 10.

~
4 1~
À . Ñëêèçî et al .

L,ì

F i g . 6 . P o ssi b le t em p er a t u r e lev el s î Ã t h e h ea t st o r a ge sy st em .

of 750 W ò ' , the area occupied with solar collectors designed only for storage charging does not
exceed 7 ò ' . This value is fully acceptable for the device used.

CON CL U SI ON
A s shown by calculations, the suggested procedure of pumping heat from the solar water heating
device into the Í Ð store is rather promising. À further increase in the heat engineering parameters
of âèñÜ an installation is bound up with the search for, and use of, heat storage materials which
combine 1î è cost and high thermal conductivity, as well as reduction of heat losses through heat
insulation. A s for the diameter of the heat pipes used, it must be restricted to 60—70 mm because
its increase will hinder wetting of the entire evaporator surface. The optimum distance between the
storage heat pipes is determined from power and temperature requirements.

REFEREN CES
1. Ñ . À . B r eb b ia , B o u n d a r y elem en t m et h o d i n en g i n eer i n g , P r oc . 4rh l n r . C onf . B o un d a r y E lem en t M et h ods , Sp r i n g er ,
B er l i n a n d N ew Y o r k ( l 9 82 ) .
2 . Â . A b r a m so n , J . Y a r o n a n d 1. B o r d e, A n a n a l y si s o f à fl a t p l a t e so l a r c o l lec t o r w i t h i n t er n a l b o i l i n g , T r an s . A S M E ,
J So la r E n er gy E ng ng 10 5 , 4 ( ! 9 8 3) .