The Institute for Advanced Energy Technologies (ITAE) was established in Messina in 1980 by the National Council of Research (CNR), the main Italian research public organization. ITAE has long experience in environmentally friendly production, storage and use of energy, and has been contributing to development and penetration of technologies related to energy saving, low polluting energy production, renewable energy sources, hydrogen and fuel cells in Italy and Europe since the early 80’s.
In the field of thermally driven adsorption heat pumps and chillers, ITAE research activity in GEOFIT concerns several fields, covering different levels of development of the adsorption machine. Valeria Palomba, graduated in Materials Engineering at the University of Messina and working at ITAE, is one of the women actively participating in the project, and her work is focused on the development of thermal systems for energy conversion storage.
In this interview, Valeria Palomba talks about the challenges for women within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields.
“…GEOFIT is deploying and demonstrating on the operational field different heating and cooling solutions exploiting geothermal energy as a source, so this project is important because we will have five operational sites where the potential of geothermal energy will be demonstrated…”
GEOFIT Project is a reference project where Women have an important role in different aspects covering technical and scientific. Ana Benedicto starts this series of interviews where GEOFIT Project will deliver several experiences and expectations from the Women participating.
Wait for the request to be processed. The processing of the questionnaire takes some time, the chat is also not answered quickly. After three days I began fildena to panic a little, because the pills from the stockpile were coming to an end. On the fourth or fifth day I got a reply from support saying that there were a lot of requests and they were answering with a delay. Then they confirmed that they could prescribe the medication I had previously taken and indicated in the form.
The GEOFIT project was recently presented at the World Geothermal Congress 2020+1on 26th October in Reykjavík, Iceland. Around 300 people attended the conference across its 3-day duration (25-27 October), and there were 31 participating European-funded research projects (GEOFIT + 30 others) represented in the European Research & Innovation Pavilion organized by the GEOTHERMICA Project (Grant agreement ID: 731117). The pavilion has a dedicated website, and Twitter handle. The pavilion highlighted Research & Innovation European project’s cooperation, displaying the research outcomes, and boosting the positive impact on geothermal needs and untapped energy. There was an opening speech at the Pavilion by EC Project Officer Ms. Filipa Vieira Matias. The GEOFIT presentation was delivered by Zia Lennard of R2M Solution, and after a general introduction of the project it focused on briefing the 5 Pilots and the various tools and methods being utilized within the project. The presentation was recorded and images of the slides are shown below.
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WGC 2020+1 had a limited focus on shallow geothermal for low temperature heating and cooling. However, in that regard hopefully the onsite GEOFIT presentation and the associated earlier virtual presentation delivered by Michael Lauermann and Edith Haslinger of the Austrian Institute of Technology raised awareness to the innovativeness of technology coupling at system level, as well as the wide potential and positive socioeconomic impact of geothermal technologies for building renovation for the attendees of the conference, market players, and scientific researchers.
Iceland has a total installed geothermal power generation capacity of 755 MW and is among the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to electricity generation from geothermal. In terms of direct use, Iceland has developed into a role model both with its extensive use for district heating (90% of all homes are heated by geothermal energy), but also in the cascaded use of geothermal heat for bathing and swimming, greenhouse operations, fish farming and more. Moreover, the potential impact of GEOFIT was very apparent when seeing how all homes and buildings in Iceland used to be heated by direct use of geothermal steam, as illustrated in the image below.
AFTER TWO YEARS OF COVID_19 THE CONSORTIUM MET AGAIN WITH A PILOT FINISHED AND THE PROJECT IN ITS LAST RUN
The GEOFIT consortium celebrated its 8th General Assembly in person in the city of Perugia for three days. This time and after a long lockdown for the project consortium, the partners joined the meeting in the University of Perugia headquarters (Universidad degli Studi de Perugia). This General Assembly represents a big milestone within the project because of the Pilot leaded by the University of Perugia is now running, and the installation and commissioning processes have been successfully completed.
The partners presented their progress regarding the different work packages and explained the work done during the last months after the 7th General Assembly held remotely in May 2021.
GEOFIT Project Partners at University of Perugia
For the restrictions already existing as consequence of COVID_19 pandemic, some partners attended the meeting remotely. This situation did not represent any inconvenient to review the project progress and plan the next steps towards the project closing next year.
The different Work Packages and deliverables are in a very finished status according to the work plan. The meeting had a big issue to discuss in terms of the demo sites progress, to this respect, the pilot owners showed the results obtained during this period. For Bordeaux demo site the drilling works are finished, and the installation of geothermal systems (EGS) is planned to be done the week before Christmas. The commissioning is planned to be performed during the Q1 2022. Regarding the Sant Cugat demo site, the control system must be completed in December 2021 and the commissioning of the geothermal system is planned for the third week of January 2022, while the passive cooling system will be installed in Easter 2022. With respect to Galway demo site, the first heat pump has been produced and sent, the other one will be ready in early February 2022 while some other aspects of the works to be performed on the site are being solved. In Aran demo site, the drilling works have been done, and the insulation material is being installed in the house.
One of the main objectives of the meeting at Perugia has been the visit to the first demo site completed. This visit to Sant’ Apollinare was really satisfactory as the results of the project have been successfully presented by Anna Laura Pisello and Jessica Romanelli from University of Perugia.
Visit to Sant’ Apollinare – Perugia Demo site of GEOFIT Project
Besides the technical development and piloting of the project, the consortium agreed to reinforce the dissemination and publicity actions of the different technologies used in the project. To this respect, a benchmarking tool will be published as web-tool – to be embedded in the GEOFIT website.
Finally, the participation in several reference congresses and events are important actions that will be continued in 2022. As a GROENHOLLAND initiative, the project will be present in the European Geothermal Congress and also as panel expert in Berlin in October 2022. Some partners like AIT, EURECAT, NUIG and IDP have submitted abstracts for the Congress. The consortium will also be present at GeoTherm Congress in Offenburg – Germany at the beginning of 2022. A stand to exhibit the different technologies developed in GEOFIT will be available.
Visit to the technical room at Sant’ Apollinare – Perugia
This interview is part of a series! You can see all our partner interviews here.
Ochsner Wärmepumpen (OCHSNER) was founded in 1978 as one of the first companies in Europe to produce heat pumps on an industrial scale, being a well-known producer of innovative heat pump systems covering all types of heat sources and capacities ranging from 2 to 1.600 kW.
In GEOFIT, they are responsible for several innovations with regards to optimising the design of heat pumps. These innovations have never been applied in heat pumps design and sizing and they will allow to decrease the environmental footprint while in parallel making heat pumps more affordable so that they can compete against non-renewable technologies.
One of the innovations, in collaboration with AIT, regards the design of an innovative, electrically-driven heat pump system with low/medium GWP synthetic refrigerant, which in turn makes a more cost-effective use of heat exchangers (HEX). They have also contributed to new methods to calculate heat pump sizing requirements which have been implemented within the IDDS framework used to design our pilot sites. This new methods will prevent oversizing of the heat pump component in geothermal systems which often results in non-optimal efficiencies/return on investment and can decrease the competitiveness of geothermal technologies with respect to competing systems.
These innovations have never been applied in heat pumps design and sizing and they will allow to decrease the environmental footprint while in parallel making heat pumps more affordable so that they can compete against non-renewable technologies.
In this interview, Oschner founder Dipl. Ing. ETH Karl Ochsner talks about the benefits of using the heat pumps in geothermal retrofitting, how projects like GEOFIT can connect themselves to the European Heat Pump Association (EHPA), and its impact on the market and the environment.
One of the key aspects of the EU GEOFIT project is the development of integrated engineering design tools for different types of ground heat exchangers. This toolkit provides design methodologies for vertical borehole heat exchangers, shallow horizontal and slinky type heat exchangers, and earth basket (spiral) heat exchangers.
Ground heat exchangers (GHEX) are used to provide a heat source or heat sink used for heating or cooling a building. They are typically constructed of plastic pipes installed in different configurations in the ground. A fluid is circulated in the pipes and the GHEX extracts heat from the ground (heating operation) or rejects heat to the ground (cooling operation).
For the validation of the analytical solutions used in the integrated engineering design toolkit, especially the new finite line source solutions developed for earth basket (spiral) heat exchangers laboratory experiments (figure 1) and detailed numerical simulations (figure 2) have been performed.
The goal of the performance analysis is to identify key-design parameters affecting the overall system performance. Parameters investigated include:
Diameter of the earth basket (spiral) heat exchanger
Pipe diameter in relation to flow rate and pressure drop
Distance between adjacent rings in relation to total length and buried depth
Soil thermal parameters
Evaluation of the results of the performance analysis should take into account the actual effect on system performance. As an example, it can be attempted to reduce the thermal resistance in all cases as much as possible. However, the effect on performance is related to the actual heat rate of the system (figure 3). It is clear that with a low heat rate (5 W/m) the thermal resistance can be allowed to be high without affecting performance. These results will have implications for operating these systems during part-load conditions, which is important in view of the application of frequency-controlled compressors in the heat pumps. In this way, the results of the GEOFIT project not only provide designers with the tools to evaluate different types of ground heat exchangers in one integrated tool but also allows optimization of actual system operational control.
Figure 3. Relation between thermal resistance (fluid to ground) and energy performance degradation for different specific heat rates.
REFERENCES
Meeng, C.L (2020). Development of an engineering tool for the design of novel shallow ground heat exchangers – GEOFIT. MSc Thesis TU Eindhoven.
Dörr, C.J. (2020). CFD Analysis of Ground Heat Exchangers. MSc Thesis Montan Universität Leoben, Austrian Institute of Technology.
Kling, S. (2020). Experimental characterization of Helix-Type Ground Source Heat Exchangers Configurations for Developing a Standardized Design Tool. MSc Thesis FH Burgenland University of Applied Sciences, Austrian Institute of Technology.
The GEOFIT consortium successfully held its 7th Virtual General Assembly on May 20 and 21 2021, our first GA for 2021! The meeting was organised online in two intense half-day sessions during which work package leaders where able to present the progress made with the core technologies, demonstration activities and coordination work packages.
Kicking-off our 7th meeting!
The first-day session started with a focus on the state of the art of technical work packages (WP). Lead by our colleagues from IDS Georadar, Groenholland, AIT, and Nuig Galway, we got to review WP2 which focused on-ground research, worksite inspection, and improved drilling technologies, and wrapped up its work last April 2021. The presentations for WP 3, 4, and 5 presented the different advances made with our Shallow Ground Heat Exchangers, Heat Pumps, system integration and efficiency management. After a short coffee break, we had the presentation of the progress of pilot implementation. In this sense, we were celebrating the commissioning of our first pilot site in Perugia, an important milestone for the project! Our Bordeaux pilot has also taken important steps in the past months when it comes to drilling.
The GEOFIT Team
On the second day, we were able to review the advances made on our GeoBIM platform and the standardisation, exploitation, and communication activities and R2M started an open discussion on possible business cases, UNE presented different approaches to the standardisation language including the CWA and COMET updated on the most recent events and the new website design and materials.
The meeting wrapped up with high hopes that next time we might meet again in person and with a clear view of the next steps that will be taken by all partners during the next 6 months.
The EU GEOFIT project comes with the goal, among others, of linking three main characters: the geothermal technology promoter, the excavation and drilling operator and the structural engineer. Within a geothermal based retrofitting of existing buildings, the first actor designs the geothermal system and dictates the main data to the excavation (drilling) works responsible. The latter one relies on earth moving machines that transfer vibrations to the soil and from here to the target building. The third character has the main role of supervisor that no damage affects the building during the plant installation.
The simplest policy would be to instrument the site and the building and to carry out a structural monitoring in the drilling phase. Currently artificial intelligence tools able to detect the incipient damage are not available. In other words, the deployed devices will only be able to detect and locate damage when this has already seriously progressed. The alternative feasible architecture goes across the knowledge of the excitation source, the identification of the vibration propagation across the soil and the understanding of the so-called building signature, i.e., the building own frequencies. The trick is to avoid amplifications in the pattern from the source to the building of those frequencies to which the building is sensitive. Along this path, the role of structural monitoring will simply be that of checking that the recorded (accelerometric) signals will confirm the numerical models.
Fig. 1 – Drilling activities at the Sant Cugat pilot
Knowledge of the excitation source. Figure 1 above, shows the drilling machine of one of the GEOFIT partners. Figure 2 below is the plot of the vertical component of the acceleration as recorded by an accelerometer on the machine. Finally, Figure 3 gives a plot of the same vertical component of the acceleration as recorded by an accelerometer on the soil nearby the machine. It is worth noticing the differences between the two ranges of intensity.
Propagation across the soil interface. The phenomenon is covered by reliable scientific software adopting sound mechanical models [2]. The role of the monitoring is to confirm that the recorded output is consistent with the model. In other words, there should not be amplification in the frequencies to which the building is sensitive. Building signature. This aspect can easily be solved by carrying out the structural monitoring in a pre-drilling stage [3].
Fig. 2 -Vertical component of the acceleration as recorded on the drilling machine (time in seconds; intensity in V; conversion 1V = (1/2.5)g). Zoom on the right.Fig. 3 – Vertical component of the acceleration as recorded on the soil near-by the drilling machine (time in seconds; intensity in V; conversion 1V = (1/2.5)g). Zoom on the right.
References
[1] Casciati S.; Chen, Z., A multi-channel wireless connection system for structural health monitoring applications STRUCTURAL CONTROL & HEALTH MONITORING Volume: 18 Issue: 5 Pages: 588-600 Published: AUG 2011
[2] Casciati, F.; Faravelli, L.Dynamic transient analysis of systems with material nonlinearity: a model order reduction approach SMART STRUCTURES AND SYSTEMS Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-16 Published: JUL 2016
[3] Casciati S., Stiffness identification and damage localization via differential evolution algorithms, STRUCTURAL CONTROL & HEALTH MONITORING Volume: 15 Issue: 3 Pages: 436-449 Published: APR 2008
Using numerical modelling for simulating manufacturing processes and predicting final properties is more or less mandatory in many industries. However, it is barely used within the rock drilling market despite being a powerful and cost-efficient method.
This is why GEOFIT will introduce a novel particle-based finite element method for modelling the drilling and excavation process. With this new approach, we aim to assist operators in choosing optimum drilling parameters and tools to reduce wear These simualtions will then be validated by comparing the outcome with the data from some of the pilots.
They key strength behind these simulations is their potential to simulate the rock fragmentation processes. The rock material will be mechanically characterized and finally the numerical approach will be validated by comparing the outcome with the data from some of the pilots.
In this video below you can see some of the numerical simulations developed up to date by the group at the Division of Mechanics of Solid Materials of Lulea University of Technology (LTU) for the GEOFIT project.
GEOFIT project coordinator, Marco Calderoni, was elected as new chair of the RHC-ETIP, the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling. His mandate started on the 1st January 2021 and will run until the end of 2021. The RHC-ETIP represents stakeholders from the biomass, geothermal, solar thermal sectors, heat pumps, district heating and cooling, thermal storage and hybrid systems. It is, therefore, a unique ETIP covering all the renewable heating and cooling technologies.
Marco Calderoni takes over for Javier Urchueguía, RHC-ETIP Chairman in 2020. As key takeaways from his presidency period, Dr.Urchueguía pointed out the influential role of the RHC-ETIP to tip the balance of the budgetary distribution towards renewable heating and cooling. During his first meeting as Chairman of the RHC-ETIP, Marco Calderoni highlighted the potential positive impact of new alliances formed in 2020, such as the one with ETIP SNET and the Clean Energy Transition Partnership.
GEOFIT is already part of their project database and is now closer to the RHC Platform that it has been so far. Thus we can indirectly contribute to their work of maximising synergies and strengthening efforts towards research, development and technological innovation of Geothermal Energy within the European Union.
