Experimental study on the net outdoor airflow ratio in supply air of membrane-based energy recovery ventilator

ABSTRACT

The total energy recovery ventilator for outdoor air handing plays an important role in reducing energy consumption of the ventilation system. At the same time, the cross infection between fresh air and return air is a direct threat to the safety of energy recovery components with the influence of COVID-19. Therefore, how to improve the total exchange effectiveness and net outdoor air flow ratio in supply air of the heat recovery system has become an urgent problem to be solved. In this study, the composite membrane was prepared by non-woven fabric, siloxaneamide and lithium chloride solution, which was used as the membrane for the heat and mass transfer between fresh air and return air. The variation of the selective permeability of the composite membrane was studied experimentally. The experimental results show that the highest permeance of the composite membrane for the water vapor permeability can reach until 32.5×10-8kg/m2wswPa. The net outdoor air flow ratio in supply air is 94% when the air volume is 550m3/h. The heat exchange efficiency of the heat recovery device is 63.2% under the conditions of the dry and wet bulb temperatures of return air and outdoor air are 21.2°C/12.9°C and 2.3°C/1.2°C, respectively. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)