An experimental study on the performance of enthalpy recovery system for building applications

In recent years, the attention of researchers has been focused on energy conservation demands due to the environmental impact of energy consumption throughout the built environment and global warming issue. Heat or energy recovery is one of the main energy-efficient systems that has been approved to overcome this problem. However, in conventional heat or energy recovery for building applications, only sensible energy has been recovered and neglecting the latent energy. In this work, enthalpy recovery system has been developed and the performances of sensible and latent energy have been investigated experimentally. The efficiency of close to 66% has been achieved for sensible energy and the latent energy efficiency was nearly 59% gained. Comparison of efficiency with effectiveness-NTU method showed both were in good agreement. Recovered energy was achieved up to 167 W at 3.0 m/s air velocity with 4.3 °C temperature difference.

► We develop enthalpy recovery that utilises cellulose papers to recover sensible and latent heat.
► We carry out an experimental investigation to evaluate the performance of sensible and latent heat.
► We measure temperature, relative humidity and airflow rate at the supply and exhaust streams.
► We conclude that as the airflow increase the effectiveness decrease and recovered energy increase.