An experimental study on a novel heat recovery system

Building sector is predominated with energy consumption, and hence its energy demand. HVAC is responsible for about 60% of total energy consumption even in well tight buildings. There are several attempts in literature addressing the possibility of decreasing energy consumption of buildings via waste heat recovery technologies. The heat recovery technologies are cost effective and user friendly applications. The use of heat recovery systems aims at mitigating the energy consumption for HVAC applications as well as the greenhouse gas emissions, and hence decreasing the adverse effects of global warming on the Earth. It is well-documented in literature that the heat recovery systems are very promising for domestic applications. In this paper, experimental results of a novel heat recovery system developed for low-carbon buildings is presented. The proposed heat recovery system consists of a plate-type heat exchanger, blower fans and ducts. The parallel-flow arrangement is used to run the system. The experiments of the system are carried out in winter season in Kent. The study aims to investigate the coefficient of performance (COP) of the system as well as the heat recovery efficiency. The results show that the heat recovery efficiency of the proposed system is around 91% while the COP is 4.5.