A geothermal heatpipe prototype

A geothermal heatpipe prototype

Zijm, Peter (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering)

Boersma, B.J. (mentor)
Delfos, R. (mentor)
Omrani, Pejman Shoeibi (mentor)
Twerda, A. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Mechanical Engineering

2019-01-30

Heatpipes are promising devices for geothermal energy extraction owing to their
effectiveness to transport heat. The goal of this research is to validate an analytical heatpipe model with experiments and to investigate the difficulties in designing and constructing geothermal heatpipes. There is a lack of literature and research concerning the operation, performance limits and construction of heatpipes suitable for geothermal heat extraction. A prototype heatpipe is designed based on specifications for geothermal energy extraction and constructed in a laboratory set-up with sensors and data acquisition. The prototype setup collects experimental data and is used to evaluate important parameters, requirements and practical design difficulties. This research shows the difficulties in designing a geothermal heatpipe taking into account fluid choice and physical limitations as well as complications in constructing a properly sealed heatpipe under the influence of repeated heating and cooling. Furthermore it shows the limitations of the analytical model by comparing the model predictions with experimental data.

heatpipe
geothermal
experimental
prototype
design
limits
performance
model

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:991dc3b6-b2b2-4026-a650-dc72e5fd6027

Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 Peter Zijm