Toward cost-effective and energy-efficient heat recovery systems in buildings: Thermal performance monitoring

Recent studies show that it is possible to reduce heating or cooling demand of a building as using heat recovery systems. Heat recovery technology is basically utilised to mitigate the heat loss, and hence energy consumption due to HVAC. Within the scope of this study, thermal comfort analyses of a test house integrated with a novel polycarbonate heat exchanger are conducted. At pre and post-retrofit case, temperature, relative humidity and CO2 measurements are carried out for a test period of one week. The results indicate that the internal CO2 concentration is not at desirable range due to lack of ventilation in the test house at the pre-retrofit case. However, following the integration of the novel ventilation system into the test house, CO2 concentration is found to be varying notably from 350 to 400 ppm which corresponds to the actual comfort conditions for indoor environments. It is also concluded from the results that the average relative humidity inside the test house at the post-retrofit case is found to be 57%, which is in the desired range whereas it is considerably high before retrofitting.