Energy-saving technologies for building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems

Buildings are responsible for about 38-quadrillion BTU of the total energy in the U.S. at present. The energy demands from buildings keep increasing remarkably to meet the improving life level and the needs of occupants’ thermal comfort in the future. Therefore, the developments of high-performance building and efficient building energy systems are highly needed to address the challenges of the climate changes and energy depletion. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the studies on energy-saving technologies for building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. We start with the heat recovery technologies applied to HVAC systems. We continue with the reviews on energy-efficient technologies in heating, cooling, and air dehumidification. After a brief background, we focus on the aspects of those systems: advanced materials, component and system design, and system performance. We highlight the recently emergent design, modeling, and experimental research on those technologies and provide the suggestions and outlook for future research and development of energy-efficient building HVAC systems.