Tag Archives: Ground

Ice Storage Hierarchy of Needs

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Data Kraken – the tentacled tangled pieces of software for data analysis – has a secret theoretical sibling, an older one: Before we built our heat source from a cellar, I developed numerical simulations of the future heat pump system. Today this simulation tool comprises e.g. a model of our control system, real-live weather data, energy balances of all storage tanks, and a solution to the heat equation for the ground surrounding the water/ice tank.

I can model the change of the tank temperature and  ‘peak ice’ in a heating season. But the point of these simulations is rather to find out to which parameters the system’s performance reacts particularly sensitive: In a worst case scenario will the storage tank be large enough?

A seemingly fascinating aspect was how peak ice ‘reacts’ to input parameters: It is quite sensitive to the properties of ground and the solar/air collector. If you made either the ground or the collector just ‘a bit worse’, ice seems to grow out of proportion. Taking a step back I realized that I could have come to that conclusion using simple energy accounting instead of differential equations – once I had long-term data for the average energy harvesting power of the collector and ground. Caveat: The simple calculation only works if these estimates are reliable for a chosen system – and this depends e.g. on hydraulic design, control logic, the shape of the tank, and the heat transfer properties of ground and collector.

For the operations of the combined tank+collector source the critical months are the ice months Dec/Jan/Feb when air temperature does not allow harvesting all energy from air. Before and after that period, the solar/air collector is nearly the only source anyway. As I emphasized on this blog again and again, even during the ice months, the collector is still the main source and delivers most of the ambient energy the heat pump needs (if properly sized) in a typical winter. The rest has to come from energy stored in the ground surrounding the tank or from freezing water.

I am finally succumbing to trends of edutainment and storytelling in science communications – here is an infographic:

Ambient energy needed in Dec/Jan/Fec - approximate contributions of collector, ground, ice

(Add analogies to psychology here.)

Using some typical numbers, I am illustrating 4 scenarios in the figure below, for a  system with these parameters:

  • A cuboid tank of about 23 m3
  • Required ambient energy for the three ice months is ~7000kWh
    (about 9330kWh of heating energy at a performance factor of 4)
  • ‘Standard’ scenario: The collector delivers 75% of the ambient energy, ground delivers about 18%.
  • ‘Worse’ scenarios: Either collector or/and ground energy is reduced by 25% compared to the standard.

Contributions of the three sources add up to the total ambient energy needed – this is yet another way of combining different energies in one balance.

Contributions to ambient energy in ice months - scenarios.

Ambient energy needed by the heat pump in  Dec+Jan+Feb,  as delivered by the three different sources. Latent ‘ice’ energy is also translated to the percentage of water in the tank that would be frozen.

Neither collector nor ground energy change much in relation to the base line. But latent energy has to fill in the gap: As the total collector energy is much higher than the total latent energy content of the tank, an increase in the gap is large in relation to the base ice energy.

If collector and ground would both ‘underdeliver’ by 25% the tank in this scenario would be frozen completely instead of only 23%.

The ice energy is just the peak of the total ambient energy iceberg.

You could call this system an air-geothermal-ice heat pump then!

____________________________

Continued: Here are some details on simulations.

Earth, Air, Water, and Ice.

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In my attempts at Ice Storage Heat Source popularization I have been facing one big challenge: How can you – succinctly, using pictures – answer questions like:

How much energy does the collector harvest?

or

What’s the contribution of ground?

or

Why do you need a collector if the monthly performance factor just drops a bit when you turned it off during the Ice Storage Challenge?

The short answer is that the collector (if properly sized in relation to tank and heat pump) provides for about 75% of the ambient energy needed by the heat pump in an average year. Before the ‘Challenge’ in 2015 performance did not drop because the energy in the tank had been filled up to the brim by the collector before. So the collector is not a nice add-on but an essential part of the heat source. The tank is needed to buffer energy for colder periods; otherwise the system would operate like an air heat pump without any storage.

I am calling Data Kraken for help to give me more diagrams.

There are two kinds of energy balances:

1) From the volume of ice and tank temperature the energy still stored in the tank can be calculated. Our tank ‘contains’ about 2.300 kWh of energy when ‘full’. Stored energy changes …

  • … because energy is extracted from the tank or released to it via the heat exchanger pipes traversing it.
  • … and because heat is exchanged with the surrounding ground through the walls and the floor of the tank.

Thus the contribution of ground can be determined by:

Change of stored energy(Ice, Water) =
Energy over ribbed pipe heat exchanger + Energy exchanged with ground

2) On the other hand, three heat exchangers are serially connected in the brine circuit: The heat pump’s evaporator, the solar air collector, and the heat exchanger in the tank. .

Both of these energy balances are shown in this diagram (The direction of arrows indicates energy > 0):

Energy sources, transfer, storage - sign conventions

The heat pump is using a combined heat source, made up of tank and collector, so …

Ambient Energy for Heat Pump = -(Collector Energy) + Tank Energy

The following diagrams show data for the season containing the Ice Storage Challenge:

Season 2014 - 2015: Monthly Energy Balances: Energy Sources, Transfer, Storage

From September to January more and more ambient energy is needed – but also the contribution of the collector increases! The longer the collector is on in parallel with the heat pump, the more energy can be harvested from air (as the temperature difference between air and brine is increased).

As long as there is no ice the temperature of the tank and the brine inlet temperature follow air temperature approximately. But if air temperature drops quickly (e.g. at the end of November 2014), the tank is still rather warm in relation to air and the collector cannot harvest much. Then the energy stored in the tank drops and energy starts to flow from ground to the tank.

2014-09-01 - 2015-05-15: Temperatures and ice formation

2014-09-01 - 2015-05-15: Daily Energy Balances: Energy Sources, Transfer, Storage

On Jan 10 an anomalous peak in collector energy is visible: Warm winter storm Felix gave us a record harvest exceeding the energy needed by the heat pump! In addition to high ambient temperatures and convection (wind) the tank temperature remained low while energy was used for melting ice.

On February 1, we turned off the collector – and now the stored energy started to decline. Since the collector energy in February is zero, the energy transferred via the heat exchanger is equal to the ambient energy used by the heat pump. Ground provided for about 1/3 of the ambient energy. Near the end of the Ice Storage Challenge (mid of March) the contribution of ground was increasing while the contribution of latent energy became smaller and smaller: Ice hardly grew anymore, allegedly after the ice cube has ‘touched ground’.

Mid of March the collector was turned on again: Again (as during the Felix episode) harvest is high because the tank remains at 0°C. The energy stored in the tank is replenished quickly. Heat transfer with ground is rather small, and thus the heat exchanger energy is about equal to the change in energy stored.

At the beginning of May, we switched to summer mode: The collector is turned off (by the control system) to keep tank temperature at 8°C as long as possible. This temperature is a trade-off between optimizing heat pump performance and keeping some energy for passive cooling. The energy available for cooling is reduced by the slow flow of heat from ground to the tank.

Frozen Herbs and Latent Energy Storage

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… having studied one subject, we immediately have a great deal of direct and precise knowledge … of another.

—Richard Feynman

Feynman referred to different phenomena that can be described by equations of the same appearance: Learning how to calculate the distribution of electrical charges gives you the skills to simulate also the flow of heat.

But I extend this to even more down-to-earth analogies – such as the design of a carton of frozen herbs resembling our water-tight underground tank.

(This is not a product placement.)

No, just being a container for frozen stuff is too obvious a connection!

Maybe it is the reclosable lid covering part of the top surface?

Lid of underground water/ice storage tank.

No, too obvious again!

Or it is the intriguing ice structures that grow on the surface: in opened frozen herb boxes long forgotten in the refrigerator – or on a gigantic ice cube in your tank:

Ice Storage Challenge of 2015 - freezing 15m3 of water after having turned off the solar/air collector.

The box of herbs only reveals its secret when dismantled carefully. The Chief Engineer minimizes its volume as a dedicated waste separating citizen:

… not just tramping it down (… although that sometimes helps if some sensors do not co-operate).

He removes the flaps glued to the corners:

And there is was, plain plane and simple:

The Chief Engineer had used exactly this folding technique to cover the walls and floor of the former root cellar with a single piece of pond liner – avoiding to cut and glue the plastic sheet.