The largest building equipment manufacturers in the nation toured the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center’s experimental testing chambers. Credit: Amy Smotherman Burgess, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy
Leaders representing the largest building equipment manufacturers in the U.S. toured the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Research and Integration Center, or BTRIC, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory April 15-16 as part of the American Heating and Refrigeration Institute’s, or AHRI’s, semi-annual technology and research committee meetings.
The two-day visit focused on discussing the nation’s industry research needs and how ORNL’s scientific and technological capabilities can allow for the evaluation of next-generation technologies that can be integrated within heating, air-conditioning, refrigeration, or HVAC-R, and water heating equipment and systems.
This is the second time ORNL was chosen as the location for AHRI’s leadership meeting, which sets the organization’s research interests and priorities for the year. AHRI is the trade association that represents manufacturers of HVAC-R and water heating equipment. The organization has more than 300 members with their products accounting for more than 90 percent of the residential and commercial equipment manufactured and sold in North America.
Industries represented during the AHRI meetings included A.O. Smith, Bradford White, Carrier, Chemours, Copeland, Danfoss, Daikin, Dover Food Retail, Johnson Controls, Rheem, Trane Technologies, Shrieve, Lennox, Hussmann, and NYSERDA.
“It’s an honor to be chosen as the host location for this prestigious group,” said ORNL’s Samuel Yana Motta, a distinguished R&D researcher in building equipment, who organized the visit. “We had the opportunity to share ORNL’s diagnostic capabilities, present results of recent building equipment research achievements, and explore opportunities for future collaborations.”
According to Xudong Wang, vice president of research for AHRI, maintaining a strong relationship with ORNL is a goal of the trade association.
“It’s extremely important for us to work with ORNL on research that benefits domestic manufacturers and the whole industry,” he said. “Industry can fully benefit from ORNL’s world-leading research capabilities to support our technology advancement.”
Wang said that AHRI’s leadership developed a solid plan with the ORNL team to collaborate on key research activities critical to the industry. Several industry advisory groups will be formed to work with the ORNL team on next-generation refrigerant technologies, for example.
“Our members were particularly impressed by ORNL’s testing capabilities, especially the environmental chambers that can test large-capacity unitary products,” he said.
From the industry perspective, manufacturers like Johnson Controls appreciate the opportunity to tour the equipment diagnostic capabilities of ORNL and to speak to scientists on-on-one.
“It was helpful to see the development of the current and future test chambers that will be used for future research and testing for our equipment,” said Roy Crawford, executive director for advanced technology at Johnson Controls. “Equipment manufacturers want to ensure that research done by the national labs is useful and fundamental and equally helps all members of our industry.”
Established in 1993, BTRIC is the Department of Energy’s only designated user facility dedicated to performing early-stage research and development in building technologies. For more information, visit ornl.gov/facility/btric.
