Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning Laboratory

 

The HVAC Laboratory contains three major test facilities including an HVAC Air Flow Loop, Refrigeration System Test Bed and finally a Humidity Sensor Test Facility. The HVAC Air Flow Loop is a multi-purpose facility designed to simulate a variety of HVAC systems as presently installed in actual buildings. Components installed in the HVAC Air Flow Loop are a variable speed fan (up to 1500cfm), a steam humidifier, VAV boxes, air-to-air heat exchangers, an air flow measuring station, humidity sensors, and four different types of air-to-fluid coils, including a steam, a hot water, a chilled water and a refrigerant evaporator DX coil.

Using any combination of these coils and other components, building air can be heated, cooled, humidified or dehumidified. This air flow loop has been used for teaching and demonstrating HVAC fundamentals and operations along with being used for a variety of research projects dealing with components, systems and HVAC controls.

The evaporator DX coil installed in the HVAC air flow loop is supplied by a well-instrumented Refrigeration System Test Bed that can be used to evaluate the thermal performance of a range of refrigerants (e.g. R-134a, R-410a, R-407c, etc.) In addition, recent studies have investigated the feasibility of using non-miscible mineral oils with alternative refrigerants in refrigerant systems.

Another test facility that is part of the HVAC Laboratory is the Humidity Sensor Test Facility. The backbone of this facility is a state-of-the-art humidity sensor calibrator and test bed. This humidity calibrator has the capability to establish accurate relative humidities (e.g. 0-100% range) over a wide range of temperature (e.g. -10°C to 60°C), which can in turn be used to evaluate the accuracy of commercial humidity sensors.