fairfolio
Saved Projects

Passive Solar Air Cooling/Heating Using Geological Insulation

CSEF · 2010 Applied Mechanics & Structures

William G. Thornbury · De La Salle High School, Concord, Contra Costa County

Overview

Objectives/Goals My goal for this project was to develop a cost efficient, "green" method for cooling or heating ambient air that could be used to remedy problems our environment faces today and in the future with intensifying climate issues. Methods/Materials In this experiment I built two U-shaped PVC pipe apparatuses made of two 7 foot segments of 3 inch and 6 inch PVC pipe that were connected by a 2 foot segment and two elbow-joints. I dug a four foot trench into the soil with an auger and buried the 6 inch apparatus. I attached a solar powered fan to one of the open ends and created an airtight seal. From 12:00-1:00 PM and from 1:30-2:30 PM I measured the temperature of the air flowing into the apparatus, the temperature of the air flowing out of the apparatus, the soil temperature on and 4 feet below the surface, and the humidity. Results In both the 12:00-1:00 and the 1:30-2:30 time period there was a significant increase in temperature after circulation (supported by a 2-sample t test). The temperature of the soil 4 feet below the surface remained relatively constant throughout the entire experiment ranging from 11-13 degrees celsius. Conclusions/Discussion Consequently, future climate change would have little effect on the soil temperature if I were to dig deeper to where the temperature of the soil is even more stable. Therefore, as our planet's climate intesifies, my research can reduce the percentage of crops lost to extreme weather conditions and mitigate temperature fluctuations in new housing developments while cutting energy costs by cooling or heating the surrounding air.

Summary statement

My project goal was to see if I could change the temperature of air by circulating it through soil using solar power.

Help received

My brother helped design the board; My mother taught me how to format the data into excel; My father helped me dig the trench; My uncles drove me to UC Berkeley so that I could do outside research in the libraries.

Competition history

  • CSEF 2010 Applied Mechanics & Structures · Entry S0217

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google