GeothermSkin offers a brilliant solution in the field of shallow geothermal systems. GeothermSkin is an hydraulic circuit for heat exchange with the ground applied to the external earth- contact surfaces of buildings. The system is modular and can be implemented both in new constructions and during buildings retrofitting.
Patent Status
SUBMITTED
Priority Number
102019000024604
Priority Data
18/12/2019
License
ITALY
Market
The market of renewable energy sources is hampered in urban areas by the scarcity of free land surfaces to allocate for energy purposes. Indeed energy generation for heating and cooling of buildings usually requires large surfaces (e.g. horizontal heat exchangers, solar panels, etc.)
GeothermSkin allows to use the underground surfaces of the buildings for clean energy production, winking at both the residential and commercial buildings market.
The system can be applied to new constructions but is efficient also for existing buildings undergoing energy retrofitting.
Problem
The challenge against climate change and carbon based gas emissions needs the contribution of decarbonisation of the constructions heating and cooling sector. Every year, Europe consumes half of the primary energy to feel us comfortable at our homes, offices, stores from a thermal point of view.
In urban areas this need is particularly challenging as the great population density makes atmosphere unhealthy with extremely high levels of pollution. In Italy, this condition is pointed out of being the cause of more than 50000 deaths every year. The issue is often faced with restriction to urban traffic and by stopping older vehicles, without considering the whole bunch of pollution sources and causing large economic losses.
Production of the thermal energy needed for heating and cooling buildings cannot be far from the user due to transportation losses. Hence the need arises for clean, renewavle and distributed energy sources. However, the collection of these distributed and low-density energy sources requires very large installations that are hardly ever available in densely inhabitated areas as our modern cities are.
With the GeothermSkin technology, it will be possible to locally produce the thermal energy for living comfortably in buildings, cutting the emissions and eliminating land consumption at once.
Current Technology Limits
pace heating is often operated by boilers (mainly natural gas fueled), district heating or heat pumps. Boilers produce heat by combustion of fossil fuels rather than biomass. Howeverr in both cases greenhouse gas emissions result from combustion.
District heating shows high efficiency by concentraring the energy production in large installations and then transporting the energy to the final user. Greenhouse gas emissions are only spatially moved to suburbs and energy transportation is related to energy losses.
Very few installations only provide heating in winter season and cooling in the summer season. Moreover district cooling is extremely uncommon. Heat pumps can be used for this purpose. These are based either on air-to-water or water-to-water installations.
Air Source Heat Pumps show large influence of external temperatures on the efficiency. These are extremely variable. On the contrary, Ground Source Heat Pumps, namely geothermal heat pumps employ resources that are highly stable from the thermal point of view.
Heat exchange with the ground usually requires deep and expensive drillings rather than large surfaces to be dedicated exclusively to this purpose. Energy Geostructures can overcome these issues but are limited to new constructions only.
To date no technology exists that does not need combustion, employs a stable heat source, does not require large areas and can be applied to existing structures at the same time.
Killer Application
Main applications of this technology are:
– Transformation of underground and foundation storeys of new buildings in geothermal collectors.
– Energy retrofitting of existing buildings.
– Integration of Hot water production and winter space heating by coupling with other sources (e.g. solar) and provide summer space cooling with a single installation.
– Convert houses and construction works in energy prosumers
Our Technology and Solutions
This energy system allows for the realization of a geothermal installation by employing the earth-contact portions of buildings as exchanging surfaces.
The system is made up of modules that assemble an hydraulic circuit where heat exchange takes place and allows to equip all the available surfaces of the building. System installation is simple: modules are extenally applied to the walls as the final step of the construction process. In the case of existing buildings, once the wall is exposed thanks to excavation, the modules can be applied.
Once the deployment is done, the walls are buried and the surface can be restored. The final result completely hides the interventions done.
Linking of modules with the building allows to collect in a single collector the heat carrier fluid and circulate it to the technical room where a water-to-water heat pump is installed.
Tests carried out demonstrate an heat exchange efficiency of about 20 W/m2 in winter heating mode and of up to 65 W/m2 in summer heating operations. All these advantages are obtained without any free land consumption.
Advantages
Roadmap
The launch of this innovative technolgy only requires minor adjustments and test in real scale at full operation:
– Real scale pilot plant realization for medium-term testing and verification of the level of satisfaction
– Precasting and standardization of the realization procedures and of the hydraulic circuits in the perspective of logistic optimisation of transport and installation
– Design of a tecnhnolgical platform for plug-and-play integration with other renewable energy sources
TRL
Il team
