Investigation of energy recovery performance and frost risk of membrane enthalpy exchanger applied in cold climates

Hao Li, Tao Zhang, Ji Zhang, Bowen Guan, Xiaohua Liu, Takema Nakazawa, Lin Fang and Toshio Tanaka

Energy, 2023, vol. 282, issue C

Abstract: The membrane enthalpy exchanger (MEE) is a viable energy recovery device to alleviate building energy consumption. In this paper, a quasi-counter-flow MEE's energy-saving effect and frost risk under severe cold conditions is investigated experimentally and numerically. The experimental results demonstrate that frost occurs when the outdoor air temperature falls below −14 °C. At an outdoor temperature of −26 °C, the enthalpy effectiveness decreases from 63.8% to 43.3% after one hour of frosting, accompanied by a significant increase in the exhaust air's pressure drop by 2.7 times. Furthermore, the simulation results reveal that the lower latent effectiveness compared to sensible effectiveness contributes to the highest risk of saturation near the exhaust air outlet. Moreover, this study analyzes the influence of MEE's geometrical and physical characteristics on its recovery effectiveness and frost risk. The findings indicate that increasing the membrane spacing can prolong MEE's operation duration at the expense of recovery effectiveness. Specifically, the MEE's total energy recovery during the whole heating season in Shenyang, China, increases by 18% when the membrane spacing is extended from 2 mm to 5 mm with a membrane thickness of 70 μm. This study provides insights into the MEE design.

Keywords: Building energy efficiency; Exhaust air enthalpy recovery; Membrane enthalpy exchanger; Quasi-counter-flow exchanger; Severe cold climates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:282:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223022880

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.128894

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