A Review of Underground Soil and Night Sky as Passive Heat Sink: Design Configurations and Models

Abstract

Energy consumption for heating and cooling constitute the majority of the energy use for building loads. Using passive cooling systems to reduce the energy consumption or to make the process more efficient can be very beneficial. Ground coupled heat exchangers and night sky radiative cooling systems have been used for centuries to achieve cooling and ice making. Ground coupled heat exchangers use the temperature difference between underground soil and ambient air or water for heat transfer between the soil and the fluid passing through buried pipes. Night sky radiative cooling takes advantage of the night sky as the coldest heat sink available for heat transfer with any surface. Use of these simple designs with the modern cooling/heating systems has the potential for a major impact on the heating and cooling needs. This review paper describes the various designs, configurations and applications of these systems as well as determining the parameters that impact their performance.

Condensation heat removal due to the combined impact of natural convection and radiative cooling

“…Various ways of accumulating cold were also proposed. For example, in work [4] it is proposed to place the cold accumulator underground. However, despite all the improvements made, RC systems using cold accumulators remain expensive and require a lot of space for placement.…”

Technological options and strategies towards zero energy buildings contributing to climate change mitigation: A systematic review

“…A classification of TABS can be found in Table 9. Similarly, radiant cooling can partially replace up to 11% of the power consumption of active cooling systems [116]; a good classification and comparison between technologies was done by Lu et al 2016 [117] (Table 10). Hanif et al 2014 [118] reviewed the relation between radiative cooling power and the temperature difference between the ambient and the sky, and Kim et al…”

“…Earth-air heat exchanger is a non-conventional technique that uses the earth underground heat for space cooling/heating, both integrated in the buildings as passive systems (Figure 51) as well as integrated in an active system [116]. Gao et al 2018 [195] presents a clear classification of such ground source heat exchangers.…”

Water Harvesting from Air: Current Passive Approaches and Outlook

“…In contrast, one notes the appealing passive AWH processes, which do not require any energy demand or are completely driven by natural or sustainable power . The conventional approaches are fog and dew collection on large-area nets or panels, whose water yield is normally modest and seriously influenced by environmental conditions. − In addition, the heat released during the liquefaction process of droplets also has an adverse effect on the condensation of dew .…”