The project is supported by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) through the RD&D programme.
This is a joint project between between University College Dublin School of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and Geoserv.
Irish subsurface conditions are generally quite well understood and much data exists on the rock types and groundwater properties. However, data on the thermal properties of Irish rocks is less well understood.
This project wishes to build on the work initiated by the Geological Survey of Ireland and UCD* at profiling the geothermal properties of Irish ground conditions. This is being done to determine the suitability for deployment of closed loop, ground source heat collectors in order to:
1) aid the optimisation of these collectors at the design stage by providing ground thermal properties data for the purpose of sizing and
2) facilitate their deployment in Irish conditions by promoting “best practice” and allowing for a more reliable quantification of their potential energy contributions
The project will gather this data by carrying out down hole field tests on existing geothermal collectors as well as lab testing of cores from different Irish rock formations to be undertaken at UCD.
The data obtained through this project will facilitate the understanding of potential shallow geothermal resources in given areas and will be used to help inform policy makers as to the potential for deployment of ground collector systems in different parts of Ireland, facilitating energy planning and the calculation of energy saving from optimised ground source collectors
*references: Hemmingway 2012, McGuiness 2013, Hemmingway and Long 2012 and 2013, and Mc Guinness et al, 2014
The ShallowTherm project has been supported with financial contribution from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland under the SEAI National Energy Research, Development & Demonstration Funding Programme 2019, and Geological Survey Ireland (GSI) – Grant number 19/RDD/443. The project has also received in-kind contribution from GSI.