BTC Research Facilities

The Buildings Technology Center (BTC) at ORNL is a National User Center that provides the buildings industry with broad access to a unique collection of testing and analysis capabilities for proprietary or nonproprietary research and development. Facilities are available for testing a variety of HVAC&R systems and components, building envelope systems (walls, roofs, and foundations), insulating materials, and existing building retrofit measures.

HVAC&R facilities include the following:

• Environmental chambers for testing heat pumps and air conditioners up to about 20-ton capacity,

• Compressor calorimeters for up to 5-ton capacities,

• Multipurpose vapor compression test loops,

• Air-to-refrigerant heat exchanger test loop (up to 3-ton capacity, evaporating or condensing),

• Absorption heat and mass transfer rigs, and

• Corrosion test laboratory.

These facilities are backed up by analytical modeling tools for both vapor compression and absorption refrigeration systems.

Industry and other groups can access the BTC through a variety of established arrangements:

• user agreements, which allow users to work on projects at the center with BTC staff;
• cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs), which enable users to share research costs with DOE; and
• Work for Others agreements, which enable the BTC to carry out proprietary research projects.

All projects are subject to the condition that they must be consistent with or give priority to the BTC's primary mission: to support DOE research on energy-efficient buildings.

BTC Home Page     U.S. Department of Energy