Thermodynamic heat recovery without an additional thermodynamic circuit
AssigneeLennox Industries Inc.
InventorBastien Jovet
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A refrigerant circuit includes a compressor operable to compress a refrigerant, an expansion valve, an outdoor heat exchanger, an indoor heat exchanger in a fresh air inlet to a conditioned space, a recovery heat exchanger in an extracted air outlet from the conditioned space, and a reversing valve operable to direct a direction of refrigerant flow between a cooling mode and a heating mode.
Claims19
A refrigerant circuit, comprising:
- a compressor operable to compress a refrigerant;
- an expansion valve;
- an outdoor heat exchanger;
- an indoor heat exchanger in a fresh air inlet to a conditioned space;
- a recovery heat exchanger in an extracted air outlet from the conditioned space;
- a reversing valve operable to control a direction of refrigerant flow between a cooling mode and a heating mode;
- and
- wherein the outdoor heat exchanger is in counter-current flow in the heating mode and the cooling mode.
A computer-program product comprising a non-transitory computer-usable medium having computer-readable program code embodied therein, the computer-readable program code adapted to be executed to implement a method, the method comprising:
- operating a refrigerant circuit in a cooling mode or a heating mode to condition an indoor air in a conditioned space, the refrigerant circuit comprising a compressor operable to compress a refrigerant, an expansion valve, an outdoor heat exchanger, an indoor heat exchanger in a fresh air inlet to the conditioned space, and a recovery heat exchanger in an extracted air outlet from the conditioned space;
- recovering energy from the indoor air via the recovery heat exchanger, the recovering energy comprises at least one of subcooling the refrigerant with the recovery heat exchanger;
- and
- performing a deicing procedure, the deicing procedure comprising:
- recirculating a first portion of the indoor air from the extracted air outlet, downstream of the recovery heat exchanger, to the fresh air inlet, upstream of the indoor heat exchanger;
- directing a second portion of the indoor air across the recovery heat exchanger;
- directing the refrigerant from the indoor heat exchanger through the expansion valve to the outdoor heat exchanger;
- and
- directing the refrigerant from the outdoor heat exchanger to the compressor bypassing the recovery heat exchanger.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.