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FREEHEAT: Revolutionising the viability of natural ventilation through heat recovery

People Involved

Professor Ben Hughes

Project Description

Free Running Buildings Limited targets the first cost-effective high-performance passive ventilation system with heat recovery, radically reducing the energy, carbon dioxide and cost-burden of achieving legislative requirements for indoor-air-quality in public-sector buildings, including schools, healthcare facilities and leisure centres. In response, and working collaboratively with the University of Sheffield (Building Energy Group and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre), Free Running Buildings now aims to further develop their core technologies for wind-driven passive ventilation and heat-exchange to realise FREEHEAT.

Health, performance and productivity of building-occupants is significantly impacted by failure to maintain acceptable levels of carbon dioxide, pollutant/allergens and temperature. Adequately ventilating these buildings requires full refresh of inside- air every 6-10 minutes, with ventilation and heating using existing approaches yielding over 60% of energy-use and running-costs in these sectors (e.g. UK public sector: 26billion kWh/year; 6.9million tonnes CO2/year; £750million/year).

To address the huge energy and cost-demands of current technologies such as air-conditioning or mechanical ventilation systems, adoption of wind-tower-based passive ventilation is growing. However, the requirement to constantly and rapidly raise the inlet air temperature when cold stimulates a significant space-heating requirement in many market territories, which fundamentally restricts the zero-energy operating window and corresponding viability of this approach.

Project Acronym FREEHEAT
Status Project Complete
Value £106,254.00
Project Dates Sep 1, 2020 - Dec 31, 2021

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