Date of Award

6-2019

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Rebecca Cortez

Abstract

Heat recovery ventilation continues to increase in importance as building codes mandate reduced air infiltration and increased energy efficiency. Heat recovery ventilators are able to reduce building heating and cooling loads by transferring heat between the exiting air and incoming ventilation air. In the role of heat recovery ventilation, additively manufactured polymer composite heat recovery ventilators offer significant advantages over traditionally manufactured metallic alloy heat recovery ventilators. Through the implementation of additive manufacturing, the internal geometry of the heat recovery ventilator can be optimized to decrease the head loss across the system and features to improve heat transfer such as fins can be added without increasing the number of manufacturing steps. The advantages of using a polymer composite are that polymer composites are compatible with fused deposition modeling, have thermal conductivities high enough to make a practical heat exchanger, and are chemically stable in wet environments. The creation of an additively manufactured polymer composite heat recovery ventilator is feasible.

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