The buildings of the Umwelt-Campus are supplied completely with renewable energies, with a various amount of converters combined with equipments for rational energy usage like photovoltaic systems, solar collectors, heat pumps, air conditioning, solar architecture, earth-heat-exchanger etc. and a biomass energy conversion plant nearby for heat and electricity. All these technical active and passive converter are integrated in the building automation. The whole system has still to be analysed and optimised. For this reason, it is advantageous to integrate these necessary work on this system in the study courses to teach students, with the possibility of students own real experiences. In a first step, project and diploma works are started, to give an overview of the single system technologies and the technical data together with the underlying physical theories. An important support for this purpose is the deeper inside and knowledge of the technical engineer Mr. Andreas Doll, who is responsible for the whole building system. His experiences and reports given to the students are very valuable. The next step would be optimisations and integration of new technologies for research and development.

One of the first works for diploma thesis is that of Jorn Herz, who analysed the earth-heat — exchanger, which is combined to a heat pump and massive absorber. The earth can be used as a solar heat storage, which can in winter as well as in summer be used for an air­preconditioning. The heat exchanger system consist of horizontal pipes under the earth surface, which guides the air from outside in the building, with a cooling effect in summer and heating in winter. The earth is therefore used as a seasonal heat storage.

Additionally, there is a heat recovery system implemented, which restores a part of the heat of the air leaving the building back to the earth. A massive absorber at the air outlet works as heat storage for a heat pump.

Aim of the diploma thesis of Mr. Herz was first to describe the installed earth heat exchange system at the Campus and the corresponding physical foundations. And second he made measurements and model calculations, to get information about the quality of this installation.