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Program Manager:
A. Hunter Fanney
Revised: 9/27/2007
BFRL Goal:
Enhanced Building Performance
Relevant Links
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Healthy and Sustainable Buildings
Objective:
To provide the measurement science, performance metrics, assessment tools, and fundamental data critical for the development and implementation of technology needed to reduce greenhouse gases associated with the life-cycle operation of buildings while maintaining a healthy and productive indoor environment. This includes addressing measurement needs in the areas of photovoltaics, fuel cells, thermal insulation, and volatile organic compound testing.
Problem:
What is the problem and why is it hard? The U.S. spends approximately $572 billion per year to operate constructed facilities. Energy consumption associated with residential and commercial buildings is responsible for approximately 40% of the total U.S. energy consumption. Global energy demand associated with buildings has increased on average by 3.5 percent per year since 1970. Building owners are confronted with ever increasing energy costs while striving to maintain a healthy and productive indoor environment. Electric utilities face potential brownouts or blackouts as growing power demands exceed their ability to generate and distribute power. In addition, there is worldwide concern with the substantial environmental consequences of CO2 emissions, of which 37% within the United States are associated with residential and commercial buildings.
The building industry has historically been slow to adopt new energy conservation or distributed energy technologies. It relies upon the federal government for the measurement science and performance prediction tools to assess the technological and economic benefits associated with emerging building energy technologies. Due to the fragmented nature of the building and construction sector, the vast array of technologies involved, higher initial capital costs for energy efficient technologies and the lack of a concerted effort to quantify the benefits of various energy reduction strategies, key decision makers are often unaware of the potential benefits associated with energy conservation and distributed energy resources. Effective introduction of new technology and improved building energy conservation measures depends upon decisions and investments by millions of building and home owners. Building stakeholders are faced with higher initial capital costs to implement energy saving and lack the metrics needed to evaluate economic and environmental benefits on a life-cycle basis.
How is it solved today and by whom? Most energy related research and technology development in the building industry is conducted by universities and government research laboratories. The Department of Energy (DOE) provides financial support through a diverse and extensive grant program intended to foster development of technology to improve energy efficiency and displace fossil-fuel generated electricity. Private sector investment in specific products and DOE funded national laboratories also contribute. Building owners and operators attempt to reduce energy consumption by embracing energy conservation measures, various control strategies, and to an increasing degree, renewable energy sources. However, progress has been hampered by a lack of measurement science, standard reference materials, and diagnostic techniques. There is a critical need for evaluation tools that can help select technologies and practices that are most appropriate for specific geographic locations and building types, as well as quality assurance tools that ensure systems reach their energy performance potential.
Approach:
What is the new technical idea and why can we succeed now? The Healthy and Sustainable Buildings Program strives to remove barriers and provide assessment tools for building energy technologies that reduce energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions through conservation measures and distributed energy sources while maintaining a healthy indoor environment. The program is comprised of the following elements:
• Efficiency improvements associated with space conditioning equipment
• Addressing measurement needs associated with distributed energy sources
• Thermal conductivity measurements
• Improved indoor air quality through energy efficient technologies
• Methodologies for assessing cost-effective building energy technologies
Recent Results:
The following list represents significant FY07 results including peer reviewed archival articles:
- Demonstrated significant heat transfer enhancements in refrigerants used for HVAC application through the use of nano lubricants.
- Completed proof of concept study for MEMS based vibration senor, a critical component for future HVAC fault detection systems.
- Developed a comprehensive plan for improving measurement science related to volatile organic compound testing.
- Advanced state-of-the-art knowledge in the interactions between building envelope infiltration and mechanical ventilation.
- Developed data and design tools to form the basis for controlling airborne infectious diseases.
- Fabrication of photovoltaic test beds to evaluate the relative performance of various photovoltaic technologies and provide data for model validation.
- The US Fuel Cell Council has applauded NIST for developing performance standards for fuel cell systems, and encourage the work to be expanded to backup power systems.
- The USDA BioPreferred program, which requires BEES evaluation prior to designation by federal rulemaking of product categories mandated for preferred biobased federal purchasing, has developed a new draft rule that references BEES.
- The BEES impact assessment methodology is being incorporated into the U.S. version of the commercial Simapro software tool. Simapro is the most popular life cycle data development tool in the world for LCA practitioners.
Peer Reviewed Archival Publications
Calm, J., Domanski, P. 2006, "Condiciones de reemplazo del R-22",AC/R-LatinoAmerica, 9(4):26-28, July-August 2006; 9(5):28-32, September-October 2006.
Domanski, P. A., Yashar, D., 2007, "Optimization of Finned-Tube Condensers Using an Intelligent System", Int. J. Refrig., Vol 30, No. 3, pp. 482-488.
Gebbie, J.G.,Jensen, M.K., Domanski, P.A., 2007 Experimental Transient Performance of a Heat Pump Equipped with a Distillation Column", Int. J. Refrig., Vol 30., No.3, pp. 499-505.
Domanski, P. A., Yashar, D., Kim, M., 2005, "Performance of a finned-tube evaporator optimized for different refrigerants and its effect on system efficiency", Int. J. Refrig., Vol. 28, No. 6, pp. 820-827..
Domanski, P. A., Yashar, D., Kaufman, K. A., and Michalski, R. S., 2004a. "Optimized Design of Finned-Tube Evaporators Using Learnable Evolution Methods", Int. J. of HVAC&R Research, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 201-212.
Domanski, P.A.,Hermes, C.J.L., 2007 "An Improved Correlation for Two-Phase Pressure Drop of R-22 and R-410A in 180 Degree Bends", submitted for publication in Applied Thermal Engineering"
Kim, M., Payne, W. V., Yoon, S.H., Domanski, P.A., "Design of a Steady-State Detector for FDD of a Residential Air Conditioner" (submitted May 2007 to Int. J. of Refrig.)
Kim, M., Payne, W. V., Domanski, P.A., Yoon, S. H., Hermes, C.J.L., "Performance of a Residential Heat Pump Operating in the Cooling Mode with Single Faults Imposed" (WERB approved; to be submitted to Int. J. HVAC&R Research)
Yashar,D., Domanski, P.A., DeVoe, D.L., 2006 "A Microfabricated Flow Controller for Refrigerant Exapansion", accepted for publication in JSEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.
Payne, W.V. & Geist, J., "Low Cost Digital Vibration Meter,"J. of Research NIST, Vol. 112, No. 2, pp.115-128, March-April 2007
Healy, W.M. 2005, "Lessons Learned in Wireless Monitoring," ASHRAE Journal, Vol. 47 No 10, October 2005, pp. 54-60.
Davis, M.W, Fanney, A.H., LaBarre, M.J., Henderson, K.R., Dougherty, B.P. 2007, "Parameters Affecting the Performance of a Residential Fuel Cell System" ASME Journal of Fuel Cell Sci. and Tech., Vol. 4/2, pp 109-115
Fanney, A. H., Dougherty, B. P., and Davis, M. W., "A Comparison of Predicted to Measured Photovoltaic Module Performance," submitted to Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, 2007.
Fanney, A. H., Dougherty, B. P., Davis, M. W., King, D. L., Boyson, W. E., and Kratochvil, J. A., "Comparison of Photovoltaic Module Performance Measurements," Transactions of the ASME, Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Vol. 128, May 2006, pp. 152-159.
Howard-Reed, C., Nabinger, S.J., and Emmerich, S.J. (2007). "Characterizing gaseous air cleaner performance in the field,"Building and Environment, in press.
Related Projects
- Detailed Dynamic Fluid/Surface Interface Measurements for Post Service Connection Decontamination Project
- Carbon Monoxide Exposure from Emergency Generators
- Metrics and Tools for Sustainable Building
- Nanofluids Heat Transfer Measurements
- Advanced Tools for Simulating Performance of Vapor Compression Systems
- Novel Methods for Optimization of HVAC&R Equipment
- Fully Automated Fault Detection and Diagnostic Methods for Monitoring Energy Efficiency and Refrigerant Emissions from Residential Heat Pumps Operating in the Heating Mode
- Thermal Conductivity Measurements
- Enabling Fuel Cells for Backup Power Applications
- Photovoltaic Measurement Techniques
- Emissions Testing Standards for Volatile Organic Compounds
- Residential Ventilation and Air Cleaning Performance Prediction
- Strategies to Reduce the Spread of Airborne Infections in Hospitals
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