Influence of grout thermal properties on heat-transfer performance of ground source heat exchangers

Abstract

Grout plays an important role in the heat-transfer performance of borehole heat exchangers. The current study developed a numerical model to investigate the effect of grout thermal conductivity and heat capacity on the heat-transfer performance of borehole heat exchangers. The “relative thermal conductivity” was defined to obtain the best matching relationship of thermal conductivity between grout and soil. The numerical model was validated through sandbox experiments. The results showed that, when the grout thermal conductivity and heat capacity were both varied by 47.00%, the effect of the grout thermal conductivity on the pipe wall temperature was 26.44% stronger than that of the grout heat capacity; whereas the effect of the grout heat capacity on the heat-transfer radius was 5.21% stronger than that of the thermal conductivity. As the same variation of the grout thermal conductivity, when the soil thermal conductivity change from 1.30 to 1.90 W/(m·K) (1.60 kcal/[m² · h · °C]), the effect of the changing grout thermal conductivity on the heat-transfer performance decreased by 8.04%. The results also showed that the optimal relative thermal conductivity was 1.20–1.30. These results can serve as guidelines for selecting appropriate grouts for different geological conditions.