Energetic analysis of an air handling unit combined with enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger

The energetic analysis of an air handling unit (AHU) combined with an enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger has been studied to improve the first law thermodynamic efficiency. The energy balance equations for enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger, conditioned space, heating coil, cooling coil and mixing box have been performed and solved based on a program developed in Engineering Equation Solver. The results showed that using an enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger leads to energy recovery which in turn decreased the total required AHU power. The effect of using an enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger on recovered energy in hot and humid ambient is more than the cold and dry one. Using the enthalpy air-to-air heat exchanger, the cooling coil load decreases by 28.27%, which in turn increases the first law efficiency by 32.8%.