The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has Awards for six engineering schoolsincluding the University of Maryland’s (UMD) A. James Clark School of Engineering, $26 million to establish a new Gen-4 Engineering Research Center (ERC) focused on containing the environmental costs of cooling technologies. ERCs are among the NSF’s most significant and coveted awards.
“We are honored to partner with the National Science Foundation and other leading research institutions to develop more efficient and effective heating, cooling and ventilation systems,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “This award is a testament to the talents of our students and faculty who are fighting climate change and improving lives around the world.”
The Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) will redefine the process for heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) systems around the world. Through research, education and innovation, EARTH will develop sustainable, accessible and equitable refrigerant technologies and practices that improve quality of life and combat climate change.
“We are incredibly grateful and proud of this award and the opportunity it provides to make a lasting contribution to a sustainable future,” said Samuel Graham Jr., Dean of the Clark School. “We depend on HVACR technologies to provide comfortable living environments, the safe transportation and storage of food and medicine, and other everyday applications. Climate change and the growing global demand for HVACR are impacting society’s ability to meet that demand in a way that minimizes environmental impact. Through groundbreaking research, workforce development programs, and partnerships with industry, Maryland Engineering has a strong track record of developing innovative HVACR solutions, and we are ready and eager to bring that experience to the EARTH ERC.”
Heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration are vital to society, regulating the temperature in homes and buildings and transporting and storing food and medicine. However, the hydrofluorocarbons used in most systems are a major contributor to global warming, 700 to 4,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. High leakage rates and high energy consumption exacerbate the problem. As part of the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol signed in 2016, the United States and 170 other countries agreed to phase out hydrofluorocarbons. Fluorocarbons (The new ERC will help drive the technological innovations needed to deliver on this commitment.
The $26 million NSF EARTH Hub is a partnership between six universities led by the University of Kansas and Mark Shiflett of its Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. At the Clark School:
-
Professor and interim head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering Ichiro Takeuchi acts as research director
-
Visiting Professor Dongxia Liu, who works in materials science and engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, will co-lead the research.
-
Associate Professor and Clark Faculty Fellow Dame Agonafer from the Mechanical Engineering Department will take over the site management.
The research focus, which is led by Takeuchi and co-led by Liu, concerns novel and safe coolants and energy-efficient systems. In addition, Brent GoldfarbProfessor at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, co-directs another major focused on redevelopment and reuse.
“With the new ERC, we can continue our work on alternative cooling technologies, such as elastocaloric coolingbased on metallic coolants. It is extremely timely because we recently demonstrated that the group of solid-state cooling technologies, called calorics, has matured to the point that scaling of devices and systems may soon lead to commercial applications,” said Takeuchi.
Reinhard RadermacherDirector of UMD’s Center for Environmental Energy Engineering (CEEE) and CEEE Co-Director Yunho Hwang will carry out several projects within the ERC’s research priorities. Among other things, they will help advance the development and implementation of wide temperature range elastocaloric regenerators while working on improving their cooling performance. CEEE has been a leader in HVACR innovation and energy systems research for over 30 years, working with industry partners to develop and implement novel approaches to air conditioning, refrigeration, heat pumps and integrated cooling and heating systems.
Agonafer, the director of the Nanoscale Energy and Interfacial Transport Lab (NEITLab), will lead the development of novel porous materials for high-efficiency dehumidification in HVACR systems to improve energy efficiency and thermal regulation in various cooling applications. Agonafer will also support Rademacher and Hwang in the development of novel alternative cooling technologies such as solid-state phase change materials and thermoelectric systems. “The EARTH ERC will enable research and development of novel porous dehumidification materials that are critical for developing efficient next-generation HVACR systems,” said Agonafer.
The NSF Engineering Research Centers program brings together technology-based industry and Universities work together to strengthen the competitive position of American industry in the global marketplace. This ERC has interacting core components that go beyond the research project, including the development of the engineering workforce and the creation of value within an innovation ecosystem that will outlast the life of the ERC.
The UMD was selected as one of the first six ERCs established under the programme in 1985. This centre eventually became the Institute for Systems Research (ISR), an internationally recognized leader in advanced technologies such as autonomy, artificial intelligence and robotics.
Published August 21, 2024
