Utilization and dissipation of waste heat by soil warming

Soil warming research at The Pennsylvania State University and other locations in the United States and West Germany is reviewed from both a crop production and heat dissipation viewpoint. Earlier harvests and increased yields for crops grown in heated soil have been reported in the majority of studies. Soil warming systems for dissipation of all the reject heat from a 1000 MWe power plant would require too large a land area to be practical. However, it appears possible to design optimized systems which can be economically competitive with conventional cooling methods.