Experimental Study for Heat Pipe Applications on Low Enthalpy Geothermal Energy Utilization for Agricultural Products Dryers

Abstract

The utilization of geothermal energy needs to be improved to support energy diversification and sustainable environmental development. Applying heat pipes as a heat transfer device, will overcome several obstacles to increasethe use of geothermal energy, especially low enthalpy geothermal energy. Theobjective of this study is to investigate the thermal performance of heat pipe usage for heat distribution from lowenthalpygeothermal fluids to agricultural dryers.Geothermal fluid simulator (hot water) useswater that is heated by 9000 Wattsheater andisflowed by a pump. The heat pipe has a length of 700 mm OD 10 mm, while the heat pipe filling ratio is 50%.In this experiment, the number of heat pipe used are 42 pieces. The condenser usesatotal of 181 finswith a size of 76 x 345 mm. Fin from aluminum material with 0.105 mm thicknessis used in this experiment. The result show that the heat pipe could be carried out as a Heat Pipe Heat Exchanger (HPHE) in applications of low enthalpy geothermal heat. The value of HPHE effectiveness increases asthe increase of hot water temperature on the side of the inlet evaporator and tends to decrease asthe air velocity increases.The biggest HPHE effectiveness value is 61,427 %.