Sustainable Lifecycle 

HVACR systems are widespread throughout society and vital to human quality of life. They play a key role in transportation, food preservation, medicine storage, and the heating and cooling of buildings. Most refrigerants used today are legacy refrigerants called HFCs, which have high GWP. Though vital for modern living, HFCs have been a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The mission of EARTH is to develop a transformative, sustainable refrigerant lifecycle that mitigates these environmental impacts while increasing the energy efficiency of HVACR systems. 

EARTH is founded on four ERC pillars that include convergent research, workforce development, impact, and innovation ecosystem. The Center uses a team-science approach to bring together talent in chemical, environmental, mechanical, and materials engineering; architecture; business; chemistry; economics; geography; history; law; psychology; and entrepreneurship in one innovation ecosystem to co-create convergent technical and societal solutions with industry partners, technical and community colleges, professional organizations, regulators, and end users. 

EARTH will create a transformative, sustainable, refrigerant lifecycle to address the HVACR ecosystem’s key technical and societal challenges that include: 1) lowering HFC emissions, 2) creating safe, low-GWP refrigerants, and 3) increasing HVACR energy efficiency. EARTH is working with HVACR-ecosystem partners to aid with industry adoption and provide unique testbeds for scaleup of refrigerant processes and cost targets for new products. 

In addition, EARTH has co-created workforce goals with industry to increase the number of HVACR engineering researchers, as well as connected with community and technical colleges to address workforce gaps through coordinated outreach and training. The goal is to shape the HVACR industry’s future, giving a competitive advantage to U.S. companies through partnering with EARTH faculty and students. The Center will also be a national resource for innovation and talent to ensure the U.S. remains the technology leader in the HVACR industry. 

Environmental Impact 

With input from stakeholders and a focus on fundamental knowledge, enabling technologies, and system testbeds, EARTH will address the issue of refrigerant environmental impacts. For example, refrigerant leaking and venting will be addressed by new separation, conversion, security-tagging, and waste-refrigerant-reuse technologies, spurring sustainable decision-making and new startups. Novel, safe, property-balanced, low-flammability, low environmental-impact refrigerants will be explored with molecular simulations of candidate fluids, development of solid-state materials, regulatory-impact economic analysis, and corporate-innovation insights. 

Higher HVACR energy efficiency will be obtainable through new energy-efficient dehumidification materials; refrigerant-specific leak sensors; reversible chemical reactions as a vapor-compression alternative; and systems modeling, lifecycle analysis, techno-economic analysis, and exploration of corporate, environmental, and governance activities. Crosscut themes include synthesis and characterization, behavior and policy, and modeling and analysis, which will integrate research with ERC pillars. 

The heart of this initiative is a collaborative approach that brings together industry leaders, including OEMs, refrigerant producers and reclaimers, suppliers and service organizations, and academic institutions. Chemours is one of the companies collaborating with EARTH to drive innovation and create practical solutions that can be implemented on a global scale by our industry. The partnership presents a tremendous opportunity for Chemours to play an active role in reducing the environmental footprint of refrigerants. Earlier this year, Chemours demonstrated its support for the EARTH initiative by dedicating booth space at the AHR Expo in Orlando, Florida, to showcase this important effort to the industry. 

The work conducted at EARTH will have far-reaching implications, potentially setting new standards for refrigerant production and lifecycle management. The Center’s efforts to enhance energy efficiency in HVACR systems could lead to significant reductions in energy consumption, further supporting global sustainability goals.  

For more information, please visit EARTH’s website, https://erc-earth.ku.edu, or contact Prof. Mark Shiflett at mark.b.shiflett@ku.edu.