FEA Model and Simulation for Heat Recovery Ventilator Systems

To reduce building's heating and cooling loads, it is crucial to employ energy recovery systems that use exhaust air to precondition ambient fresh air, thereby recovering a large quantity of energy and reducing the overall HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) energy requirement. Enthalpy heat exchangers (EHE) that use a porous membrane as the heat and moisture transfer surface are effective devices for recovering latent and sensible energy. In this paper, we designed a heat exchanger using Solidworks that will be introduced to a heat recovery ventilation system. The recuperator was analyzed using different materials such as aluminum, PLA, copper and steel using ANSYS to have the best performance material of the heat exchanger to get the most efficient heat recovery ventilation system. The results of the finite element analysis showed that if we use steel and aluminum, water vapor will freeze at the hot air outlet. PLA is the most convenient material to use in the heat exchanger (HX) due to its good performance showed in the finite element analysis and to its low price.