$26M grant fuels University of Hawai‘i research on climate-friendly cooling

A team from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is tackling an important cause of human-made climate change: Common refrigerants used for everything from cooling homes and businesses to freezing and preserving food and medicine.

The National Science Foundation announced on Aug. 21 that the University of Hawai‘i and five other universities have been awarded $26 million to establish a fourth generation National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center to create sustainable refrigerant technology.

The majority of refrigerants – called hydrofluorocarbons – are used in heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR) systems. HVACR systems account for almost 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions because of leaks that release hydrofluorocarbons into the atmosphere and the significant amount of energy it takes to operate them.

The new National Science Foundation Gen-4 Engineering Research Center Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub, or EARTH, aims to create a transformative “sustainable refrigerant lifecycle” by lowering hydrofluorocarbon emissions; creating safe, property-balanced replacement refrigerants; and increasing the energy efficiency of HVACR systems.

“Hawaiʻi is increasingly vulnerable to global warming and its impacts, including more frequent and severe weather extremes and sea level rise,” said University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa professor Ralf I. Kaiser. “Sea level rise, which exacerbates flooding, coastal inundation and erosion, poses a serious threat not only to Hawaiʻi, but also to major population centers along the Pacific Rim, such as Japan and Australia.”