Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Novosibirsk State University –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
For the first time in Russia, a ready-made air handling unit with a recuperator offering absolute frost resistance—it can withstand temperatures down to -90°C—has been introduced. The unit can be used in both individual construction projects and large industrial facilities. It reduces peak and overall building energy consumption for temperature maintenance by 70% year-round, significantly reducing costs not only during building operation but also during the design phase. The control electronics for this unit were developed by students and graduates of the NSU Faculty of Information Technology (FIT).
To reduce heat loss during ventilation, recuperators are used—heat exchangers that operate by transferring thermal energy from exhaust air to supply air supplied to the room. This process heats or cools the supply air, saving energy on heating and cooling the air. However, in freezing temperatures, existing recuperators freeze over, significantly increasing the energy costs of heating the supply air. This led to the idea of creating an innovative recuperator that combines the features of two main types of such devices—plate and rotary.
"All recuperators freeze—it's a matter of physics. But unlike others, our recuperator—a heat exchanger—is designed so that, rotating at a specific speed—approximately one revolution per hour—it moves frozen areas from the cold zone to the warm zone, where they thaw naturally," said Vladimir Fedorov, founder of the developer, Giplar, and a graduate of the Physics Department at NSU.
Novosibirsk developers have created the world's first recuperator with continuous self-defrosting without compromising efficiency. It is used to produce air handling units with a consistently high recuperation efficiency of 70%, and their efficiency is unaffected by freezing temperatures (down to -90°C) or the humidity of ventilated spaces. This reduces peak and overall energy consumption of buildings for temperature maintenance by 70% year-round.
The next step was to develop control electronics to ensure the coordinated operation of all the system's components. None of the ready-made solutions available on the market were suitable, as the recuperator was unique, so a custom control module had to be developed. This task was tackled by graduates and students of the NSU Faculty of Information Technology, led by Ilya Epishin.
"Our electronics control the heat exchanger's operation: our task was to monitor the inlet and outlet temperatures, control the power of the supply and exhaust fans, rotate the heat exchanger rotor at a specific time, and provide feedback on its position to detect any issues that may arise during rotation or during operation; and monitor the filter status using a set of sensors. We also implemented several operating modes, one of which is "Breeze," which allows us to configure the heat exchanger so that, at temperatures close to the dew point (when water vapor condenses into liquid), the air in the room is cooled using the laws of physics, rather than the air conditioner," explained Ilya Epishin.
FIT students, under the guidance of Ilya Epishin, developed a control board, wrote code for the microcontroller, programmed the board and display, and developed the interface, which required some knowledge of industrial design. They used the open-source LVGL library.
"The unique feature of the control electronics is its modular architecture, meaning it can be expanded with any number of modules, increasing its functionality, and adding an additional board. The architecture is based on a pass-through bus with a desi-chain mechanism, which enables the integration of various modules in our design. This year, my student Matvey Potapov, who also actively participated in this project, will be defending his thesis on this topic. This approach allows the controller to automatically detect an additional module when connecting it, and if the code supports it, new functions become available to the user or the system's operating logic changes automatically. It's somewhat reminiscent of plug-and-play on a computer, but applied to industrial automation. This fits well with the system itself—the heat exchanger is also modular, and for larger spaces, devices can be assembled from several modules, increasing the air volume that can be passed through it and allowing for cost-effective use in industrial facilities," Ilya explained.
The introduction of such air handling units will allow for a wider geographic reach, for example, in regions of the Far North, where recuperators are not used due to severe frosts. However, reducing heating costs is a pressing issue in these areas. This will also reduce building costs even at the design stage, when the innovative air handling units used allow for lower energy consumption requirements.
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