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Soil Warming as an Alternative to Conventional Waste‐Heat Dissipation
Author(s) -
Cook David R.,
Norman John M.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
journal of environmental quality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 171
eISSN - 1537-2537
pISSN - 0047-2425
DOI - 10.2134/jeq1982.00472425001100010013x
Subject(s) - environmental science , advection , dissipation , waste heat , thermal , environmental engineering , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , hydrology (agriculture) , engineering , geotechnical engineering , geology , mechanical engineering , physics , heat exchanger , thermodynamics
The dissipation of waste heat via soil warming has been suggested as an alternative to conventional electric generating plant cooling methods. A small field prototype was constructed to determine the potential of this alternative. The efficiency of a previously determined economic‐optimum‐size buried‐pipe network (1,821 ha) has been estimated from the application of the prototype data to an empirical advection model. The model produces dissipation estimates that are 30% lower than the prototype results. Adjusting these estimates for the greater flow rate of water through the optimum system, that system could be expected to dissipate approximately 66% of the waste heat from a 1,500 MW electric generating plant (4,366 MW thermal at 34.4% efficiency) in winter, 26% in summer, and 46% on an annual average. Seasonal and climatic considerations clearly affect the dissipation ability of the system. Nevertheless, soil warming appears valuable as a supplementary system to conventional cooling methods.