Experimental analysis of an air-to-air heat recovery unit for balanced ventilation systems in residential buildings

This paper deals with the experimental analysis of an air-to-air heat recovery unit equipped with a sensible polymer plate heat exchanger (PHE) for balanced ventilation systems in residential buildings. The PHE is arranged in parallel triangular ducts. An experimental facility was designed to reproduce the typical outdoor and exhaust air conditions with regard to temperature and humidity. The unit was tested under balanced operation conditions, as commonly used in practice. A set of tests was conducted under the reference operating conditions to evaluate the PHE performance. Afterwards, an experimental parametric analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of changing the operating conditions on the PHE performance. Experiments were carried out varying the inlet fresh air temperature, the exhaust air relative humidity and the air flow rate. The experimental results are shown and discussed in this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.