Parametric analysis of air–water heat recovery concept applied to HVAC systems: Effect of mass flow rates

In the last three decades, the world has experienced enormous increases in energy and fuel consumption as a consequence of the economic and population growth. This causes renewable energy and energy recovery to become a requirement in building designs rather than option. The present work concerns a coupling between energy recovery and Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning HVAC domains and aims to apply heat recovery concepts to HVAC applications working on refrigeration cycles. It particularly uses the waste energy of the condenser hot air to heat/preheat domestic water. The heat exchanger considered in the recovery system is concentric tube heat exchanger. A thermal modeling of the complete system as well as a corresponding iterative code are developed and presented. Calculations with the code are performed and give pertinent magnitude orders of energy saving and management in HVAC applications. A parametric analysis based on several water and air flow rates is carried out. It was shown that water can be heated from 25 to 70 °C depending on the mass flow rates and cooling loads of the HVAC system. The most efficient configurations are obtained by lowering the air flow rate of the condenser fan.