Influence of Different Moisture and Load Conditions on Heat Transfer Within Soils in Very Shallow Geothermal Application: an Overview of ITER Project

Abstract

In the near future the shallow geothermal energy resource is becoming increasingly important as renewable energy resource for heating/cooling residential and tertiary buildings. Therefore, it is worthy of interest a better comprehension of how the different soil typologies (i.e. sand, loamy sand...) affect and are affected by the heat transfer exchange with heat collectors, especially when horizontal ones (very shallow geothermal installations) are adopted. In this study the preliminary results of ITER Project (http://iter-geo.eu/), funded by European Union, are shown. An overview of physical-thermal properties variations under different moisture and load conditions for different mixtures of natural material is presented, based on laboratory and field test data.