Development of a Small-Scale Test Facility for Effectiveness Evaluation of Fixed-Bed Regenerators
Date
2020-06-25
Authors
Krishnan, Easwaran Nampoothiry
Ramin, Hadi
Shakouri, Mohsen
Wilson, Lee D
Simonson, Carey
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
ORCID
Type
Article
Degree Level
Abstract
Fixed-bed regenerators (FBR) transfer heat (and moisture) between supply and exhaust air
streams in heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to reduce building energy
consumption. This paper presents a new small-scale testing facility to evaluate the performance
(i.e. sensible effectiveness) of FBRs for HVAC applications. The major contributions of this paper
are: development of a new small-scale experimental facility and methodology for testing FBRs,
quantification of uncertainties, and verification of small-scale test data over a large range of FBR
design conditions. A numerical model and two well-known design correlations are used to verify
the results and testing methodology. The advantages of small-scale testing are that it requires low volume of conditioned airflow, has low uncertainty, requires less exchanger material and has a low cost per test. Moreover, the small-scale testing methodology of FBR would benefit heat exchanger manufacturers to perform detailed sensitivity studies and optimize the exchanger performance over a wide range of design and operating parameters prior to the fabrication of full-scale exchangers.
Description
Keywords
Fixed-bed regenerators, Performance testing, Sensible effectiveness, Heat recovery, HVAC