In this paper, a numerical study is conducted to examine the energy and exergy performance and multi-objective
optimization of a novel exhaust air heat recovery system made up of a building integrated photovoltaic/thermal
(BIPV/T) collector and a thermal wheel (TW) system. The innovative BIPV/T-TW system is capable of preheating/
pre-cooling the ambient fresh air in winter/summer and also producing electricity. Comparisons are
carried out on the basis of energy and exergy by considering three different exhaust air heat recovery systems
including the BIPV/T-TW system, the conventional BIPV/T collector, and the convectional TW system. It is
observed that the BIPV/T-TW system has the best energy performance among the considered systems in all
months of the year, while its exergy performance is lower than the BIPV/T system. Then, the multi-objective
optimization technique is utilized to obtain the optimal values of geometric and operating parameters in order to
maximize the annual useful energy and exergy obtained from the BIPV/T-TW system. It is found that annual
useful energy and exergy gained by the optimized system is 196.31MWh and 30.15 MWh, which is 563.8% and
1394.1% higher than the un-optimized system, respectively.