News - Ray W. Herrick Laboratories - Purdue University

We take refrigeration for granted, but for developing countries it can become a game-changer for health, agriculture, and economic opportunities. Engineers Without Borders turned to the HVAC experts at Purdue's Herrick Labs to help create the "Chill Challenge," where teams build devices that can make ice and cold water at minimal cost.

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) are in the spotlight now more than ever before. We need to make buildings smarter, so they autonomously adjust to the needs of their occupants. This is happening right now at Herrick Labs, the largest academic HVAC lab in the world.

Jeff Rhoads received the 2020 Charles B. Murphy Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching, one of only 5 such awards across the entire university.

Soon we'll be returning to the Moon. But how will we live there long-term? Prof. Shirley Dyke is working with NASA to design resilient extra-terrestrial habitats, with the cyber-physical hybrid prototype hosted at Herrick Labs.

In the wake of the SARS epidemic in 2003, Prof. Yan Chen worked with Boeing on how to recirculate air in their airplanes to prevent the spread of airborne diseases. Did it work? Find out in this deep dive from the Washington Post.

Jeff Rhoads' team have developed a low-cost CO2 sensor that determines whether people are present in a room. This allows HVAC systems to save energy by not heating and cooling empty rooms.

For a time, Jonathan Ore thought his childhood dream of obtaining a PhD was dashed. But Purdue's online master's in mechanical engineering gave this working professional exactly what he needed. He loved it so much, that he came to campus to complete a PhD at Herrick Labs.

Residential buildings account for 20% of total energy consumption in the United States. If these homes were retrofitted with smart systems, which only condition the air if people are present, we would save 24-42% of these energy costs. David Warsinger published this research in the Journal of Building Engineering.

Andres Arrieta has received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, their most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. His project is "The Mechanics of Hierarchically Multistable Metastructures."

Prof. Yan Chen has been working for years on redesigning airline cabins and other enclosed spaces to stop the spread of airborne viruses. Read about his latest efforts at Fast Company.