KU Program Connects HVAC Educators with Emerging Refrigerant Research

LAWRENCE, KS — Two Kansas City-area HVAC educators stepped out of their technical classrooms and into University of Kansas research laboratories this summer through a program that connects emerging engineering research with the educators who train the technicians installing and servicing new technologies.

Lucas Hachmeister, HVAC instructor at Johnson County Community College, and Cecil Davis, HVAC program coordinator and instructor at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, Missouri, completed the four-week Harnessing Educators for Advancing Refrigerant Technologies, or HEART, Research Experiences for Teachers program. HEART is run through the U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for the Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub, known as EARTH, which is headquartered at KU.

Working in KU’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, the educators joined research teams led by Mark B. Shiflett, Foundation Distinguished Professor and director of ERC EARTH, to investigate technologies shaping the future of refrigerants.

“The educators of our future technicians are essential to the research-to-workforce pipeline,” said Jennifer Sprague, director of education and workforce development for ERC EARTH. “Community college faculty working alongside EARTH researchers accelerates the flow of developing knowledge to the classroom. Their students will enter the HVACR workforce understanding how new technologies work and why the industry is changing.”

Connecting Research and Technician Education

Hachmeister worked with doctoral student and graduate mentor Kevin Turner on research developing methods to characterize refrigerant flammability. Understanding those properties can guide safe design decisions and inform the development of next-generation refrigerants.

The experience gave Hachmeister a chance to see the connections between advanced engineering research and the work his students are preparing to perform as HVAC technicians.

“I’m hoping to show through my time spent at ... EARTH ... that there are many similarities between what the technician does in the field and the researcher does in the lab,” Hachmeister said.

Hachmeister began translating the research into his own teaching before the summer program ended. He developed instructional materials for JCCC students on A2L refrigerant flammability research, safe handling practices and the reasons new refrigerants are entering the HVAC industry.

“The work being done through the RET is encouraging to me in that it creates another pathway that connects the researchers to the technicians,” Hachmeister said.

Davis worked with doctoral student and graduate mentor Yuniva Mendoza-Apodaca, whose research focuses on developing and evaluating polymeric membranes that separate hydrocarbon and hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants. The goal is more efficient separation technology for refrigerant mixtures.

During his time at KU, Davis assisted with permeability testing of the membranes, helping generate data used to evaluate their potential for refrigerant separations.

For Davis, the experience also highlighted connections between university research and the everyday work of HVAC technicians. Laboratory procedures such as pulling a vacuum, purging refrigerant lines and controlling moisture mirrored procedures technicians use in the field.

“I think technicians for the most part operate in their own silo, not really seeing or understanding the connections with industry as a whole or the ongoing research efforts,” Davis said. “We need to do a better job of informing, educating, and including those on the student and technician level in the bigger picture of things.”

From the Laboratory to Industry

The HEART research experience extended beyond KU laboratories. Participants toured Icorium Engineering Company, a KU spinout at KU Innovation Park in Lawrence that is commercializing technology to separate and recycle used refrigerant mixtures, where they saw how a discovery made in a university laboratory becomes a working industrial process. They also toured Panasonic Energy of North America’s De Soto facility to see the scale and complexity of cooling systems used in an industrial setting.

For Davis, seeing the amount of refrigerant required for a large industrial facility reinforced the broader implications of EARTH’s work.

“One building in De Soto multiplied by hundreds of other locations ... confirms the need for a circular refrigerant life cycle, and the technology to support it,” Davis said.

Participants also met with Dana Denick, the National Science Foundation program director for EARTH, when she visited KU in July. The visit gave the educators a chance to discuss connections among federally funded engineering research, education and workforce development.

Taking STEM into the Community

The program ended with Hachmeister and Davis taking what they had learned about communicating complex technical concepts to a much younger audience.

The educators visited Century School in Lawrence, where they led students in first through fifth grades in hands-on STEM experiments exploring pressure and cooling. Using a vacuum chamber and everyday objects, they asked students to predict what would happen, then used the demonstrations to explore the science behind the students’ observations.

Davis said preparing for the activity pushed him to start with broadly familiar scientific concepts and build toward their technical applications in HVACR. Visuals, predictions and discussion, he said, made complex concepts more accessible to the students.

“The engagement among the children at the Century School outreach event far exceeded my expectations,” Hachmeister said.

He said the experience changed some of his assumptions about engaging younger students in engineering and renewed his interest in finding ways to introduce K-12 students to STEM fields and careers.

Building Connections Beyond the Summer

The relationships established through the HEART RET are already extending beyond the four-week program.

Hachmeister began incorporating information from Turner’s research into his summer HVAC course and is developing additional opportunities for JCCC students interested in engineering. He and Turner have also discussed future collaborations that could bring JCCC students and faculty to KU and ERC EARTH researchers to JCCC.

“I hope that this is the beginning of a very long collaboration between the JCCC HVAC department and EARTH,” Hachmeister said.

For ERC EARTH, those relationships shorten the distance between engineering discovery, education and workforce application, allowing technician educators to engage with new research while it is still being developed.

About EARTH

The Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub is a U.S. National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center headquartered at the University of Kansas. EARTH brings together researchers, educators and industry partners to develop the technologies and the workforce needed for a circular refrigerant economy.

This program is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2330175. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation