ORNL and numerous building equipment industries signed collaboration agreements to improve the energy performance of HVAC systems and investigate alternative refrigerants.
When I started out at an HVAC consulting engineering firm back in the 1960s, our services were primarily focused on hospital design engineering. Back then, steam system engineering was standard for those building applications.
With variable refrigerant flow (VRF) HVAC systems growing in popularity, engineering refrigeration systems can become very intimidating to many design engineers.
If we added living tissue models to existing building monitoring systems, we could potentially save many years of human suffering, lost lives, and health care dollars.
This is my third column presenting a real-life example of how trend analysis, if done thoughtfully, can uncover wasted energy even when the system appears to be functioning well.