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