GELY Geothermal Collector Pipe
| Host Organisation: | Elysee Irrigation Ltd |
| Partner Organisation(s): | PA 1: CY.R.I.C Cyprus Research And Innovation Center Ltd |
| Project Budget: | 278.980,00 € |
| IDEK Funding: | 199.951,50 € |
The GELY project seeks to develop a tailor-made geothermal collector pipe with unique advantages with respect to competition products in order to overcome the limitations of existing market solutions. Current geothermal collector pipes introduce single-sided characteristics, which are associated either with the external or internal geometry or with materials. The GELY project aims to address this market gap in the lack of a truly holistic approach for geothermal collector pipes and to generate an optimal combination of geometric characteristics and materials’ structures for these pipes. A combination of this type can achieve a considerably better performance per meter geothermal pipe. The innovative GELY geothermal collector pipe will be produced through:
a) The incorporation of magnetoactive and thermally conductive (nano)fillers in HDPE geothermal pipes.
b) The orientation/alignment of the (nano)fillers in a radial direction along the pipe, by using an externally applied magnetic field during the extrusion process.
c) The increase of surface roughness through a tailor-made internal texture to obtain an optimised relation between mass flow rate and heat transfer.
d) The optimum external shape of pipe aiming to further increase the heat exchange between the fluid, the pipe wall and the outside domain without affecting the mechanical properties of the pipe.
e) A detailed computational fluid simulation that will result to the optimum combination of materials and geometry versus the soil/ground conditions and the pipe length.
f) The design and construction of a unique extrusion process that utilises a magnetic field and a specially designed die.
The proposed idea is originated from the effort of a local manufacturing company of plastic pipes and fittings for water supply, irrigation, sewage and energy, named ELYSEE, a reputable research and innovation company, named CyRIC - Cyprus Research and Innovation Center and the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering of University of Cyprus (UCY-MME).