A new kind of longitudinal flow spiral recuperator for the heat recovery in ventilation systems of buildings was studied experimentally and analytically. The aim of this work is to analyze the possibility of using air handling units with new type of spiral recuperator in order to recover heat in ventilation systems of buildings. For the reason that the air flows are parallel to the symmetry axis of the longitudinal flow spiral recuperator, in this unit pressure drops are smaller than in commonly known spiral exchangers. Because of the counter flow, a greater value of thermal effectiveness E is reached for the same value of the number of transfer units in comparison to cross-flow recuperators. The exploitation of the new type of spiral recuperator in winter periods brings significant savings. The results obtained from computations are very encouraging for a widespread use of these devices. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.