In the face of rapidly evolving technologies and emerging global climate challenges, the adoption of research and practices in sustainable energy, energy efficiency, and cooling is increasingly recognized as a critical driver of environmental and societal transformation. While the environmental benefits of such practices are widely discussed, the human, psychological, and cognitive dimensions are often overlooked. Alternative and innovative cooling solutions are needed to mitigate and adapt to the modern-day and future challenge of global warming with focus on human health, thermal comfort, and productivity in the living environment indoor and outdoor.
The research goal is to develop, share, and market technologies that enhance human productivity and health—both indoors and outdoors—while minimizing energy consumption and environmental impact.
For increased human productivity/cognition in indoor environment, it is important to design air conditioning and air distribution systems that deliver i) thermal comfort needs by controlling effectively the air temperature, humidity and velocity, and ii) clean air needs by providing high breathable air quality. For increased human productivity and leisure activities in outdoor hot and humid environment, it is aimed to reduce heat stress through wearable body cooling methods and scheduling interventions as well as introducing innovative and sustainable cooling systems that mitigate heat island effect and improve human outdoor comfort.
To achieve the above, we have developed tools for predicting human thermal response and comfort where the human physiology, environment, and system are integrated. The human body –as a system- generates heat through metabolic processes & constantly exchanges energy and matter with its environment; skin forms the boundary for most of these interactions. The tool allows us to integrate the human physiology, space & system for personalized and localized solutions.
Given the distinct characteristics of indoor and outdoor environments and the potential for interventions to target various scales within each, interventions can be categorized into four groups based on their scale and environment: i) indoor marco space; ii) occupant vicinity in indoor space; iii) urban macro scale; iv) individual vicinity in outdoor space.
Examples of interventions with human centered design:
1) Personal Cooling Wearable Systems: Improve human productivity outdoor
The target is to find solutions that enhance the human adaptation and productivity in thermally stressful environments indoor and outdoor with great energy saving potential. Saving energy is achieved by i) Providing cooling where needed to the human body; ii) extending outdoor activity comfort hours. We are shifting the focus of cooling from the whole space for indoor applications to the person or provide extended outdoor presence without heat stress when the climate is hot.
2) Enhancing outdoor comfort
- Introduce innovative solutions that can effectively harness natural airflow, providing a sustainable way to cool and dehumidify outdoor spaces and improve thermal comfort in urban areas to encourage outdoor activities. These solutions include outdoor windcatchers with mist cooling and use fluctuating air flows to enhance evaporation rates of misting due to increased turbulence and mixing resulting in cool air around targeted seated region outdoors. Fluctuating air results in enhanced thermal comfort due to the dynamic air flow
- Provide city scale cooling with the use of coating of super-cooling materials to cover wall and roofs.
3) Indoor climate control: active envelops & sustainable ventilation
- Interventions to reduce the use of conventional air conditioning:
- Active external walls for direct humidity pumping, integrated chimney-driven ventilation with liquid desiccant dehumidification loop, and hybrid personalized ventilation
- Personalized ventilation with embedded air treatment system for simultaneous cooling and sorption-based carbon and humidity capture
The forthcoming research work continues on the following:
- Develop sustainable air conditioning technologies while adopting hybrid ventilation systems for hot humid and hot dry climates.
- Investigate novel systems for improving outdoor thermal comfort sustainably under artificial canopies located in hot humid climates.
- Address a fundamental problem associated with mist cooling and fluctuating air flows to enhance evaporation and performance. Applications include both outdoor and indoor settings.
- Implement methods that can improve pedestrian level thermal comfort and reduce urban heat island effect in the humid climate of Beirut using wind catchers.
Facilities
State-of-the-art facilities are equipped to perform relevant experimentation which includes five climatic chambers for testing different systems, two of which are outdoor chambers. In addition, a thermal breathing manikin is the enabler to study clothing, comfort, ventilation, and air quality in the human breathing zone and validate basically many of the developed models and predictive tools of impact of air distribution system on comfort and particle and bacteria transport. Software tools are developed locally but commercial CFD software tools are also available.
