Textile & Laundry Exhaust Air-to-Air Heat Recovery

Textile & Laundry Exhaust Air-to-Air Heat Recovery

Textile mills and commercial laundries exhaust enormous volumes of hot, moist air — from stenters, tumbler dryers, and washing lines — and must replace it with conditioned make-up air. Venting that heat outdoors is a major, avoidable cost. An air-to-air heat exchanger recovers the sensible heat from the exhaust and pre-heats (or pre-cools) the supply for free. This guide covers core selection for the duty.

Why Textile/Laundry Exhaust Is Valuable

A stenter or tunnel dryer can exhaust 10,000–40,000 m³/h at 60–120°C — very high-grade heat. Even at 60% sensible recovery, that is tens to hundreds of kW returned to the make-up air each hour. Our efficiency reference shows how recovery converts to fuel saved. High-temperature streams favor stainless — see our welded stainless plate exchanger.

Plate vs Wheel for Textile/Laundry

Laundry and textile exhaust is hot and humid and often carries lint, fibers, and chemical vapors. A fixed plate exchanger keeps the streams fully separated (no cross-contamination, easy to clean) and recovers the sensible heat cleanly. A rotary wheel would load fibers and chemistry onto its matrix, raising fire and maintenance risk and leaking exhaust into supply — the same concern behind our wheels-banned guide. For most textile/laundry duties, specify a plate (or heat-pipe) core. Where indoor humidity must also be managed, a membrane ERV is the wheel-free alternative — the moisture question is in sensible vs latent recovery.

Material and Cleaning

Chemical-laden or corrosive exhaust calls for stainless or PP polymer plates; the trade-offs are in our material selection guide. Plan a washable or easily-accessed core and an upstream lint filter, because textile/laundry exhaust fouls fast.

System Layout

1. Fit a lint/particulate filter upstream of the core.
2. Route exhaust through one side of a counter-flow plate core, make-up air through the other.
3. Add a summer bypass when no recovery is wanted.
4. Size fans for the core pressure drop — pressure-drop reference.

What to Specify

Related

See our kitchen recovery and application library.

Get a Textile/Laundry Core

We build high-temperature, corrosion-resistant plate cores for textile and laundry exhaust, sized to your airflow and temperature. For drawings and a quote, contact +86 15753355505.