BEE Building Energy and Environments

Students are the lifeblood of the Building Energy and Environments program. At any given time there are more than 35 M.S. and Ph.D. students in the program who hail from all over the world. In addition to related courses in other departments, students choose from 12 graduate courses that address various aspects of building energy use and indoor air quality, one of the largest related sets of courses in the world. This provides students with a unique opportunity to receive both the depth and breadth of knowledge necessary to design and maintain truly sustainable buildings.

Graduates of the Building Energy and Environments program successfully compete in the marketplace. They generally receive faculty positions, scientist positions and post-doctoral fellowships at national and federal laboratories, and positions with major international consulting firms.

Graduate Courses:

• Aerosols, Air Quality, and Health
• Building Energy Management Systems
• Climate Change Mitigation
• Design of Energy Efficient and Healthy Buildings
• Energy and IAQ: Field Measurements
• Energy Simulation in Building Design
• Fire Science
• HVAC Design
• Indoor Air Quality: Transport and Control
• Modeling of Air and Pollutant Flows in Buildings
• Smart Buildings and Cities
• Sustainable Building Design

The Building Energy and Environments program at the University of Texas at Austin consists of a community of over 35 scholars (faculty, staff, post-docs and students) who investigate a wide range of issues related to building environments. Program research focuses on:

• Energy flows and conservation methods
• Moisture transport, control and effects
• Microbial growth and fate
• Sources of VOCs, SVOCs, and particles
• Transport of indoor pollutants
• Homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions
• Physical removal of gases and particles on surfaces
• Human exposure to indoor pollutants
• Control of indoor pollutants

Why is the study of building energy and environments important?

• Residential and commercial buildings account for nearly 40% of total U.S. energy consumption.
• Worldwide building energy use accounts for 33% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
• On average, Americans spend over 21 hours per day inside of buildings; the most vulnerable (infants and elderly) spend even more time indoors.
• The exposure of Americans to toxic air pollutants is dominated by what we breathe indoors, and corresponding health risks dwarf other environmental issues.
• Indoor air pollution is responsible for 5,000 premature deaths every day in developing countries. Women and children are particularly affected.
• Studies have shown that improved indoor air quality can raise the test scores of school children.
• Reasonable changes in building design and operation to improve indoor environmental quality may have annual economic benefits (in terms of worker productivity) on the order of tens of billions of dollars in the U.S.
• If designed and operated properly, buildings can be shelters that substantially reduce population exposures to harmful outdoor air pollution.
  
  

  Students, staff and faculty within the Building Energy and Environments program conduct research in academic laboratories that are unmatched in range of cutting-edge instrumentation and simulation systems. Most of the research activities take place in labs at the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources (CEER) at the University of Texas’ J.J. Pickle Research Campus. There, five separate laboratories totaling 550 m2 are devoted to Building Energy and Environments research. An additional 100 m2 microbiological laboratory and a façade thermal laboratory are based on the main university campus.

  These laboratory facilities are used for:

  • Experiments using physical simulation systems
  • Preparation for field studies
  • Instrumentation calibration and maintenance
  • Analysis of samples collected in the field or in laboratory

  Building Energy and Environments laboratories contain a wide range of instruments for analysis of gaseous and particulate pollutants. Instrumentation includes:

  • Eight gas chromatographs equipped with MS, ECD, and FID detectors and thermal desorption auto-samplers for analysis of VOCs, SVOCs, SF6, and other compounds
  • Particle sizing, counting, and generation equipment covering particles from 3 nm - 20 µm, including a scanning mobility particle sizer and an aerodynamic particle sizer
  • A wide range of analyzers for inorganic gases including NH3, NOx, H2O2, ClO2, CO, CO2, and O3Building and HVAC characterization tools including digital pressure gages, blower doors, duct testers, and airflow and velocity sensors
  • Building energy assessment tools including true power meters, heat flux transducers, and an infrared camera