Use of soil heat-pipe phenomenon to develop a heat transport device between soil surface and underground

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K14830
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Agricultural environmental engineering/Agricultural information engineering
• Research Institution: Ishikawa Prefectural University
• Principal Investigator: MOMOSE Toshihiko 石川県立大学, 生物資源環境学部, 准教授 (40742515)
• Research Collaborator: AOYAMA Shinya
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: ヒートパイプ / 土の熱伝導率 / 地中熱利用

Outline of Final Research Achievements

When soil contains an appropriate amount of water, its thermal conductivity increases dramatically under reduced air pressure. The dramatic increase in the thermal conductivity results from that individual soil pores function as micro heat-pipes, leading to a sequence of heat-pipe in the whole soil. Focusing on the possibility of the soil as a new material to transfer a large amount of heat, this study tries to develop a miniature heat-transfer devise that contains a mixture of soil and water. To evaluate the performance of the developed heat-transfer device, this study also makes a miniature greenhouse model that supposes summer. The performance evaluation reveals a possibility of the developed heat-transfer device to be a new technology for utilization of shallow geothermal energy.

Free Research Field

土壌物理