How to calculate soil heating storage capacity?
Siddharth Patil| Posted inGreen Building Techniqueson
I need to know how much heat in BTU can I store in a specific volume of a soil. I am using the underground soil of greenhouse as thermal mass storage. Right now I just know the volumetric heat capacity. But I want actual number of BTUs that I can store inside the soil. Do I need to measure the temperature variation through out the soil and then calculate the heat storage capacity?
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Soils differ in the specific heat, and the specific heat varies with moisture content. Most soils have a specific heat between 800 and 1500 Joules per kilogram per degree C, depending on type of soil and it's moisture content. That means, to change the temperature of a 1 kg of soil 1 degree it either absorbs or releases 800-1500 Joules.
It's really the mass (not volume) and the average temperature increase/decrease that determines the amount of energy stored/released.
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