Heat Recovery Chiller for Education on Low Carbon HVAC Technologies

Reducing carbon emissions during the life cycle of a building is critical for mitigating the impacts of climate change. This problem is particularly challenging in the U.S., where buildings account for nearly 40% of annual CO2 emissions for heating, cooling, lighting, and other routine operations. Although a variety of new energy efficient technologies for buildings are being deployed, that alone is not sufficient for success. It is also critically important to provide technical training for facility managers so that these new technologies operate as intended once they are installed in buildings. Delivering this technical training is the rationale for the installation of a new Heat Recovery Chiller (HRC) in an HVAC instructional laboratory at a large university. A HRC is a high efficiency vapor compression heat pump that provides both heating and cooling in a single device, which is ideal for reducing carbon emissions in a building. Although the heat recovery concept is straightforward, careful attention is needed during design and operation to achieve the intended levels of performance. Multiple teams of university students worked on the design, installation, and commissioning of this HRC over two academic years, including the development of a web-interface so that large numbers of university students can access data from this equipment in real-time as part of their HVAC coursework. This paper provides an overview of the HRC system, highlighting the opportunities for educating facility managers on some of the operational challenges with this equipment.