Improving thermal performance of groups of energy screw piles with phase change materials

Abstract

Underground thermal storage systems have potential to play an important part in the transition to renewable energy. Studies on combining building foundations with thermal storage are often limited to concrete piles, especially when involving phase change materials. In a recently published work, the authors presented a novel energy pile built using a screw pile filled with phase change materials. While the previous work considers all energy screw piles with same pile fillings, meaning a trade-off of low thermal conductivity and high heat capacity, screw piles in this work have two different functions: one screw pile filled with grout acts as the heat exchanger (energy pile) and its neighbour,..