Earth Pipe Cooling Investigation for Buildings in Hot and Humid Country Malaysia

The dependency on Air-Conditioning in Malaysia buildings has led to the country escalating annual energy consumption. In search for a better alternative in building cooling, an experiment of Earth Pipe Cooling Technology was conducted in a Malaysia University campus. The basic mechanism of the technology is that ambient air is channelled into the building through a pipe, which is buried in the soil and utilizes the earth as a heat sink. Many researchers have explored this technology with positive outcomes. However, there is no published data on similar experiments carried out in hot and humid countries. Therefore, this study is intended to evaluate the potential of Earth Pipe Cooling for buildings in Malaysia during the wet and hot and dry seasons. Before the Earth Pipe Cooling experiment was carried out, a preliminary experiment was conducted to measure Malaysia soil temperature at up to 5m deep. It was found that the most significant result occurred at 1m underground, where the soil temperature is 6°C lower than the maximum ambient temperature during the wet season and 9°C lower during the hot and dry season. Therefore, the study has used three 3” Polyethylene pipes, each buried at 0.5m, 1.0m and 1.5m deep underground. The Earth Pipe Cooling investigation compares the temperature drop at the outlet of each buried pipe, as compared to the ambient temperature. During the hot and dry season, the maximum temperature drop occurred in the 1m deep Polyethylene pipe, which is 11.5°C. During the wet season, the maximum temperature drop also occurred in 1m deep Polyethylene pipe, which is 6.4°C.