Performance characterization of the membrane-based energy recovery system

Abstract

Recently, the energy conservation demand attracted much attention, due to the depletion of energy resource and environmental impact caused by the increase in energy consumption. As well know, the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, which provide thermal comfort for occupants in buildings, account for a significant portion of global energy demand. Energy recovery is one of the key energy-efficient technologies, which reveals to deal with the increase of energy usage in building while maintaining indoor air quality. However, in the conventional heat recovery system, the sensible heat was recovered, but the latent heat was ignored. In this work, to evaluate the total energy saving potential, a novel energy recovery ventilator (ERV) model is developed with a semi-permeable membrane which can transfer both heat and moisture. A conjugate heat and mass transfer model subject to tropical climate condition is investigated by both analytical and numerical methods. The three-dimension ERV model is comprehensively studied by CFD simulation for analysis of critical parameters, such as velocity, temperature, humidity of supply and exhaust airflows. The numerical results showed that both sensible and latent effectiveness could be gained very high. Even that the latent effectiveness is lower than sensible effectiveness, the energy saving impact by dehumidification is considerable in the tropical climate.