Investigating the potential energy savings of MVHR in automotive HVAC systems

Abstract

The environmental impact of ICEVs (internal combustion engine vehicles) have led to increasing numbers of EVs (electric vehicles) and plug-in hybrid vehicles being developed. However, current HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems can heavily impact energy consumption, reducing EV range. MVHR (mechanical ventilation with heat recovery) is an approach to minimise the HVAC energy consumption currently used in buildings to meet the Passivhaus building standard and can be used for both heating and cooling. In this work a MATLAB Simulink model and a road load model are used to quantify potential energy reduction and corresponding range savings from an automotive MVHR HVAC system. The model is calibrated against data from the industry sponsor for a baseline non-MVHR vehicle. The results show a 74.3%–94.9% HVAC energy consumption and corresponding range savings of a mean average of 8.8%–11.0% range savings over the baseline case without MVHR, and a corresponding 0.5%–2.5% range increase over the industry sponsor’s vehicle’s range under certification conditions. The work concludes that the application of MVHR technology to automotive cases is beneficial.