THE STUDY OF PERFORMANCE OF EAHE SYSTEM USED IN RURAL RESIDENTIAL BUILDING OF CHINA

Low-income families in rural area of China suffer from serious indoor environmental problems such as heat stress and lack of comfort. As one of passive cooling techniques, the earth-air heat exchanger (EAHE) system has been known for many years to have potential for improve indoor thermal environment in summer whilst decreasing cooling energy consumption. The EAHE system adjusted to the rural areas perfectly because the population in residences of rural areas is relatively little and the fresh air requirement is small. Though many experimental and analytical studies on EAHE system have been reported, the application of EAHE system for rural residential buildings of China is few. In this paper, the performance of EAHE system was simulated for rural residential building in different areas of China by means of dynamic-state heat transfer model. The results would help the designers to choose the earth-air-heat exchanger configuration with the best performance and reasonable cost.