Technology & Strategy

Artificial Ground Cooling

We consider an attractive option would be to institute Artificial Ground Freezing - a process of freezing a block of sub-site ground using bore holes and surface mounted freezer units using Brine as a cooling medium. This allows cold energy to be stored for some months and to be withdrawn as required to meet cooling demand. This allows the use of cooling from winter to summer and/or night to day. Our experience at OTB engineering is in the use of this technique in tunnelling for ground stabilisation and in a similar way for mining. The technology is not expensive and it allows a fully sealed cooling system with no water loss problems. We would be interested in matching our experience with a suitable infrastructure partner to move the process forward. Applied appropriately it would make these maps irrelevant as the only criterion would become a low enough air temperature during a part of the day when off-peak electricity is available.

Posted at 11:14 AM on June 28, 2010 by Pete Yates OTB Engineering London.