Three new projects awarded to the group!

By Brent Stephens on October 21, 2012

I’ve had a few pieces of good news in terms of funding over the last month or so. Three new projects has been funded from a variety of organizations:

1. “Impact of duct design on life cycle costs of residential HVAC systems” was funded by the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI). In this project, we will work with residential HVAC design and installation firms in both Austin, TX and Chicago, IL to first design and price low, medium, and high pressure duct distribution systems for a typical residential building and then model the likely impacts of those systems on energy use and life cycle costs of operating the system in a couple of climates.
2. We were awarded a sub-contract from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to participate in a larger project to study in the indoor microbial community of a new hospital at the University of Chicago. Samples will be taken in patient rooms both before the hospital officially opens and after it is occupied for a year. Our particular component will work to characterize the building and occupancy factors that may impact the indoor microbiome, such as air exchange rates, room pressurization, temperature and RH of air and surfaces, as well as observing cleaning activities and frequencies and human occupancy. The Hospital Microbiome Project team is led by Jack Gilbert at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Lab, in conjunction with Capt. Ben Kirkup at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
3. “Linking HVAC filtration and the Wells-Riley approach to assessing risks of infectious airborne diseases” was funded by the National Air Filtration Association Foundation (NAFA Foundation). This project will match information from recent literature on assessing the risks of indoor transmission of infectious airborne diseases to the ASHRAE Standard 52.2 reporting system for particle removal efficiency by HVAC filters. Results will provide some information about how efficiently different HVAC filters may be able to capture infectious particles, such as rhinovirus, influenza, measles, SARS, and bacillus anthracis. Results will be used to model the potential impact of HVAC filters on infectious disease transmission in some typical environments.

We are very excited to get to work on these three interesting projects! We are also very grateful for our funders.