Numerical investigation of a heat wheel performance used for enthalpy recovery applications

Heat wheel is a heat exchanger in which the working fluid is air and it has parallel and counter current flow layout. These type heat exchangers are used for enthalpy recovery and/or air dehumidification processes. By means of numerous micro channels they have, it is enable for the heat wheels to transfer the heat so quickly and in a short span of time, which makes them superior. In this paper, performance of the heat wheel used for enthalpy recovery has been numerically determined. Utilizing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) algorithm, the alteration of the wheel efficiency with time has been investigated for optimum rotation speed. With the help of ANSYS Fluent™ software in which calculations have been made, the temperature distributions by location have been presented graphically. Consequently, it is found that maximum efficiency of the heat wheel is 52.62%.