Clark School, Partners Awarded $26M to Develop Better Heating, Cooling Systems

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced Wednesday that it has awarded six engineering schools, including the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, $26 million to establish a major engineering research center focused on reining in the environmental costs of refrigeration technologies.

“We’re honored to collaborate with the National Science Foundation and other top research institutions to develop heating, cooling and ventilation systems that are more efficient and effective,” 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 reimagine the process for heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) systems across the globe. EARTH, part of NSF’s Gen-4 Engineering Research Center (ERC) program, will develop sustainable, accessible and equitable refrigerant technologies and practices through research, education and innovation that will improve quality of life and combat climate change.

“We are incredibly grateful for and proud of this award, and the opportunity it creates for us to make a lasting contribution to a sustainable future,” said Clark School Dean Samuel Graham, Jr. “Through pioneering research, workforce development programs, and partnerships with industry, Maryland Engineering has a strong record of creating innovative HVACR solutions, and we are ready and eager to bring that experience to the EARTH ERC.”

Heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration enable us to control temperatures in homes and buildings, and transport and store food and medicine. But the hydrofluorocarbons used in most systems contribute significantly to global warming, with an impact 700 to 4,000 times that of carbon dioxide. High leak rates and energy consumption levels compound the problem. Under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, signed in 2016, the United States and 170 other countries agreed to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The new ERC will help spur the technological innovations needed to fulfill that commitment.

The 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 Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering Ichiro Takeuchi serves as a research lead. Visiting Professor Dongxia Liu, who shares appointments in Materials Science and Engineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, will serve as a research co-lead, and Associate Professor and Clark Faculty Fellow Damena Agonafer from the Department of Mechanical Engineering will serve as a site lead.

The research thrusts led by Takeuchi and co-led by Liu concern novel and safe refrigerants and energy efficient systems, respectively. Brent Goldfarb, a professor at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, is co-lead on another thrust, focused on reclamation and repurposing.

“The new ERC will allow us to continue our work on alternative cooling technologies such as elastocaloric cooling, which is based on metallic refrigerants. It is extremely timely, given that we have recently shown that the group of solid-state cooling technologies called calorics have matured to the point where scaling up devices and systems can soon lead to commercial applications,” said Takeuchi.

Reinhard Radermacher, director of UMD’s Center for Environmental Energy Engineering (CEEE), and CEEE co-director Yunho Hwang will conduct several projects as part of the ERC. Among other endeavors, they will help spearhead the design and implementation of large temperature range elastocaloric regenerators, while working to enhance their cooling capabilities.

Agonafer, director of the Nanoscale Energy and Interfacial Transport Lab, will lead the development of novel porous materials for high-efficiency dehumidification in HVACR systems, which will also improve heat regulation across various refrigeration applications. He will also support Rademacher and Hwang in developing novel alternative cooling technologies like solid-solid phase change materials and thermoelectric systems.

“The EARTH ERC will allow research and development of novel porous materials for dehumidification which is essential for developing next generation efficient HVACR systems,” Agonafer said.

NSF’s Engineering Research Centers program brings technology-based industry and universities together to strengthen the competitive position of American industry in the global marketplace. This ERC has interacting foundational components that go beyond the research project, including engineering workforce development and value creation within an innovation ecosystem that will outlast the lifetime of the ERC. 

UMD was previously chosen for one of the first six ERCs established under the program in 1985. That center ultimately became the Institute for Systems Research, an internationally recognized leader in advanced technologies such as autonomy, artificial intelligence and robotics.