United States. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it has invested nearly $8 million in advanced research and development of state-of-the-art HVAC technologies that deliver significant energy and cost savings in new and existing buildings.
The United Technologies Research Center will receive $975,000 to demonstrate a centrifugal compressor that enables high efficiency in commercial roofing systems in the range of 5 to 35 kW. These systems could provide 30% annual energy savings with less than two years of recovery in 2020. Mechanical Solutions and Lennox Industries will also receive $1 million to develop an HVAC system with a small centrifugal compressor that is highly efficient.
Steamless compression systems will employ new technologies that use refrigerants that do not affect the environment.
Dais Analytic will receive $1.2 million to advance membrane HVAC technology using nanostructured polymer materials to manipulate water molecules, which will allow the system to condition the air, while improving energy efficiency and eliminating fluorocarbon refrigerants.
Maryland Energy and Sensor Technologies (MEST) will receive $600,000 to develop a compact high-efficiency thermoelastic-cooling (TEC) system. Currently, TEC requires a large mechanical loading system that results in high material costs. MEST will solve this problem by reducing the size of the system by a factor of 10.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory will receive $1.4 million to develop a magnetocaloric air conditioner with the potential to improve efficiency by up to 25% over conventional vapor compression systems.
UTRC will receive $1 million to demonstrate an electrocaloric heat pump that will be 50% smaller than current models, run quieter, and are likely to cost less to maintain due to its simple mechanical design.
Xergy will receive US$1.4 million to develop electrochemical-compression (ECC) technology in combination with an energy recovery module to replace solid-state compressors in heat pumps. ECC uses fuel cell technology to allow heat pumps to use water as a coolant. Thermodynamic modeling shows that efficiency improvements of 30 to 56% are achievable.
