This course focuses on the study of thermodynamic systems used in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) of buildings, and methods for their design, modeling, and analysis. Heat pumps are central to the use of many environmental heat sources and heat sinks, allowing buildings to more efficiently use low intensity environmental resources to keep buildings comfortable and healthy. Students will construct and use physical prototypes to understand the design and performance of heat-pumps based on the vapor compression cycle and will explore their use in a variety of innovative building applications. The course will use a range of modeling tools to explore thermodynamic potentials of environmental sources, validating the models with test data from the prototypes.
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