The Center for Integrated Building Systems (CIBS) is an industry/university research center designed to develop improved connections of building systems and a mission to deliver talent and research outcomes to its members.

CIBS awarded $1M to support next generation building efficiency

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Media Contact: Jeff Hopper | Marketing Media Specialist | 405-744-2745 | jeff.hopper@okstate.edu

The Center for Integrated Building Systems (CIBS) at Oklahoma State University was recently awarded nearly $1 million spread across four awards by the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) focused on developing the next generation of high-efficiency building equipment.

Three of the four awards will support the center directly, with their outcomes shared by the center's seven industrial partners, which includes several Oklahoma-based companies.

“These projects have provided a significant boost to project support over the next three years,” said Craig R. Bradshaw, CIBS director and mechanical and aerospace engineering faculty member. “This will allow our members to extract significantly higher value out of their membership in technical areas that are critical to our vision.

“It's important to realize that heating, cooling and ventilation systems use about 20% of all the energy we use in the U.S."

Two of the center projects will focus on the development of improved compressor and heat pump equipment models that will be utilized to develop improved systems and building energy models.

“The industry is in flux at the moment, with large regulatory shifts happening that have a big impact on building energy utilization. These projects support that,” Bradshaw said.

The third center project has developed a novel way to integrate thermal energy storage (TES) into more conventional systems with a novel heat exchanger design.

“With the recent wave of digital transformation, these projects will provide a huge opportunity to explore new coupling ideas for built system assets and their digital twins,” associate professor Omer San said.

These projects are supported by five OSU faculty, including Bradshaw, San, Christian Bach, Jeff Spitler and Rushikesh Kamalapurkar.

The fourth project is affiliated with CIBS through a partnership with Bach, a CIBS faculty member, as well as CIBS member AAON Inc. This project will develop improvements to AAON’s heat pump defrosting schemes.

“The efficiency and flexibility demand on building's thermal energy systems are increasing for various reasons, including societies' environmental consciousness and reduced costs for intermittent renewable energy sources,” Bach said. “My new project portfolio starting in 2022 directly targets these issues, supported by CIBS, Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI), AAON, and OCAST.”

The Center for Integrated Building Systems is an industry-university cooperative research center at Oklahoma State University with seven industrial partners that support research with a collective vision to develop improved connections of building systems and a mission to deliver talent and research outcomes to its members.

For more information about the center, contact Craig Bradshaw, CIBS Director (craig.bradshaw@okstate.edu)

Story By: Kaitlyn Mires | kamires@okstate.edu