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Abstract
In early 2019, Henderson County School Corporation awarded the design of their new
school, Jefferson Elementary School to Hafer, an engineering and architectural firm
located in Evansville, Indiana. One request Henderson County School Corporation had,
was to utilize a geothermal system for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning of the
new school.
As an employee of Hafer under the mechanical engineering department, Chris McDonald
was assigned to the Jefferson Elementary School in February 2019 and decided to use
the geothermal system as his senior capstone design project. His project focuses on the
design and sizing of the geothermal system which includes: the geothermal field, field
pumps, building pumps, water source heat pumps (WSHP's) as well an outside air unit
which will utilize an energy recovery wheel.
Building load calculations were completed by the professional Engineer (PE) prior to Chris
being assigned to the project; these building load calculations were used in the design
and sizing for the geothermal system. In sizing the geothermal field, a geothermal
contractor was hired to drill a test hole and run a thermal analysis on the site. From the
test results of the thermal analysis and the building cooling load, it was calculated a total
of 72 loops were required. A 20% glycol solution is pumped through the geothermal field
to the building where the building pump pumps the solution to the WSHP's to provide the
heating and cooling for the building. It was calculated that the geothermal field pump
needed 650 gpm and 90 feet of head to provide proper flow to the field. The building
pump required 500 gpm and 65 feet of head to satisfy the WSHP's. The sizing of the
WSHP's were calculated from the building load calculations for each of the zones they
were dedicated to. The average size of the WSHP's was 2 Tons. Last was the sizing of
the outside air unit, to conform to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-
Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standard; Jefferson Elementary required 7,500 cfm of
outside air. The calculated values were sent to local industry representatives to make the
selections of the equipment for the geothermal loop.
The geothermal system design for Jefferson Elementary School was completed and
submitted to Henderson County School Corporation on October 20*^, 2019. Currently the project is pending approval by the Kentucky Department of Education, where once
approved, will be sent out for bid to the contractors.