Advances in heat exchangers for heat and mass transfer: a review

The conversion and utilization of energy are continuous and ever-increasing processes that play crucial roles in promoting sustainability and economic development. Adopting clean energy sources has become imperative to address environmental concerns (air pollution) and energy conservation. Heat exchangers (HEs) play a significant role in processes that achieve energy conservation through enhanced heat and moisture transfer. HEs are commonly used in heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The performance of a HE strongly influences the thermal performance of an entire HVAC system. With the increasing heat transfer requirement of modern industries, it is still an important issue to improve the thermal performance of HEs efficiently. In this article, a comprehensive review and a comparison of several previously investigated studies related to a similar topic are performed. Heat and moisture recovery have become a hot topic for building energy conservation in these years, and HEs are promising alternatives for heat and moisture recovery. The related studies are systematically analyzed to address further research on heat and moisture recovery with HEs. This literature strengthens our understanding of heat and moisture flow characteristics and mechanisms of various HEs. Moreover, ground-breaking and recent advances in various types of HEs for heat and moisture recovery will also be presented and discussed in detail.