Volume 53

A Parametric Study to Investigate the Effect of Pore Size and Number on the Thermal Energy Storage Potential of a Novel Permeable Concrete Pavement Hafiz Muhammad Adeel Hassan, Alalea Kia

Abstract

This study combines a novel high strength clogging resistant permeable pavement (CRP, also known as Kiacrete) with a ground source energy system GSES and numerically investigates the effect of Kiacrete’s pore diameter and number on its sensible heat storage (SHS) potential. The energy storage module consists of: i) a 290 × 290 × 80 mm Kiacrete slab that is the heat storage medium; ii) a 24 mm inner diameter standard HDPE pipe that is placed underneath Kiacrete and contains the heat transfer fluid (water), flowing at a temperature of 40 °C with volumetric flow rate of 18.5 litres/minute; iii) an aggregate layer (Thames Valley river gravel ≥ 5 mm), which is placed underneath the heating pipe, to simulate the ground conditions; and iv) a cooling plate with 8.12 mm inner diameter embedded copper pipes that has water flowing at a temperature of 10 °C, and is placed at the bottom of the aggregate layer, to mimic the ground temperature conditions within the UK. Four different Kiacrete pore diameters (4 mm, 6 mm, 8 mm and 10 mm) and two different equidistant pore numbers (144 and 121) were investigated for a 12-hour heating cycle. The results showed that the lower pore number and smaller pore diameter provided more energy storage media (concrete), resulting in high sensible energy storage within the Kiacrete slab. Conversely, the effect of pore number and diameter was relatively small on the heat transfer rates inside the Kiacrete slabs.

Keywords Permeable pavements, thermal energy storage, parametric analysis