Carey Simonson, University of Saskatchewan

Title: Heat, Moisture and Contaminant Transfer in HVAC Energy Exchangers and Frost-free Heat Pumps

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for increased ventilation in buildings to reduce the spread of infectious respiratory diseases. Increased ventilation can improve health and productivity because people in developed countries typically spend over 90% of their time in buildings. However, increasing ventilation, increases energy consumption and impacts climate change because buildings account for 35-40% of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, there is a growing global effort to increase the adoption of electric heat pumps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, frosting is a major problem for heat pumps in cold climates. In Vancouver, for example, an air source heat pump (ASHP) will operate under frosting conditions for 67% of the heating hours and frosting will increase heating energy consumption by over 30%.