Suitable for intensive livestock farming
Strict ventilation rules apply to intensive livestock farming. These ventilation guidelines are based on the number of animals in an animal house.
In practice, ventilation systems extract hot air from the animal house in winter. In summer, they extract cool air and replace it by hot outside ventilation air. Neither of these situations benefit the climate, nor animal health. Heating and cooling are necessary in order to achieve optimum climate conditions. And this, in turn, goes hand in hand with high electricity consumption and correspondingly high costs.
The AeroX air-to-water heat exchanger can significantly reduce energy consumption by using a split-coil configuration. One AeroX heat exchanger is placed in the outgoing air flow and another one in the incoming air flow of the animal house. There is a closed water circuit between the two AeroX heat exchangers. The outgoing air flow is fed through the first heat exchanger and transfers cold or heat to the water flowing through the tube package of the heat exchanger. This water is supplied to the heat exchanger to heat or cool the incoming air. This system could also be combined with adiabatic cooling of the outgoing air. This allows the incoming air to be cooled even more without adding moisture to the incoming air. If this is not sufficient to achieve the temperature required, the temperature can be controlled to the correct value using conventional means.
The calculation example below shows how the Exegy AeroCalc tool can be used to give a quick indication of the payback time.
Example:
Amount of air to be changed on a cold winter's day: 50000 m³/h
Current outside temperature: -7 °C
Current outdoor RH: 90 %
Current temperature in the animal house: 28 °C
Current RH in the animal house70 %
The residual heat recovered from the outgoing air can be used to preheat outdoor air of -7 °C by more than 11 °C using a split-coil AeroX configuration. This energy would normally be ventilated out of the building.
Based on the energy savings achieved during one year, the payback time will be between four and six years. If the improved animal performance (key figures) and reduced use of antibiotics are also taken into account, the payback time will be considerably shorter. Furthermore, the climate in the house will be more stable. The higher ventilation air temperature in winter enables ventilation to be increased while using the same amount of energy. This will improve feed conversion, as well as having other added benefits.