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Soil Warming as an Alternative to Conventional Waste-Heat Dissipation¹

ABSTRACT

The dissipation of waste heat via soil warming has been suggested as an alternative to conventional electric generating plant cooling methods. A small field prototype was constructed to determine the potential of this alternative. The efficiency of a previously determined economic-optimum-size buried-pipe network (1,821 ha) has been estimated from the application of the prototype data to an empirical advection model. The model produces dissipation estimates that are 30% lower than the prototype results. Adjusting these estimates for the greater flow rate of water through the optimum system, that system could be expected to dissipate approximately 66% of the waste heat from a 1,500 MW electric generating plant (4,366 MW thermal at 34.4% efficiency) in winter, 26% in summer, and 46% on an annual average.

Seasonal and climatic considerations clearly affect the dissipation ability of the system. Nevertheless, soil warming appears valuable as a supplementary system to conventional cooling methods.

Key Words: advection • surface energy-budget • sewage effluent utilization

¹ Work supported through grant no. 14-31-0001-5222 of the Office of Water Research and Technology, U.S. Dep. of the Interior, and the U.S. Dep. of Energy.

² Scientific Assistant, Radiological and Environ. Res. Div., Argonne Natl. Lab., Argonne, IL 60439; and Professor, Dep. of Agron., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583; respectively.

Received for publication February 7, 1980.