Energy recovery ventilators are often employed in buildings to decrease the energy consumed by their HVAC systems, and to improve overall indoor air quality. Several studies in the open literature have developed physical or empirical models to simulate the performance of energy recovery wheels. However, these models are often computationally intensive, time-consuming, or require numerous experimental data points to train and execute the performance predictions. These models also tend to lack flexibility for varying all of the available wheel design parameters. Hence, developing a mapping method with better computational efficiency and flexibility is the goal of this research. A finite difference numerical model for simulating the performance of an energy wheel has been developed and validated using experimental test results from independent laboratories. This model was then employed to provide an extensive data set for the development of an energy wheel performance mapping method. After validating this new mapping approach, the method predictions were compared against independent data sets from two different laboratories, and additional sources available in the literature, to identify its universality. The mapping method delivers good agreement between the predictions and validation data, and requires only a small number of data points to train, which is one of its novel contributions. Another unique contribution of the proposed mapping method is that once the model is trained it can predict the performance characteristics for other wheels with different physical design geometries and operating conditions, provided only that the desiccant material is the same.

能量回收呼吸机通常用于建筑物中，以减少其HVAC系统消耗的能量，并改善室内总体空气质量。开放文献中的一些研究已经开发了物理或经验模型来模拟能量回收轮的性能。但是，这些模型通常计算量大，费时，或者需要大量实验数据点来训练和执行性能预测。这些模型也往往缺乏灵活性，无法改变所有可用的车轮设计参数。因此，开发一种具有更好的计算效率和灵活性的映射方法是本研究的目标。使用独立实验室的实验测试结果，开发并验证了用于模拟能量轮性能的有限差分数值模型。该模型随后被用来为开发能量轮性能映射方法提供广泛的数据集。在验证了这种新的映射方法之后，将该方法的预测结果与来自两个不同实验室的独立数据集进行比较，并从文献中获得其他来源，以确认其通用性。该映射方法在预测数据和验证数据之间提供了良好的一致性，并且只需要训练少量数据点，这是其新颖的贡献之一。