A full range of facilities and equipment are available in the Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering (BEEE) to support teaching, research and consultancy work. The specialist facilities include the following.

Acoustics Laboratory

This lab is equipped with all essential and advanced equipment for the study and measurement of sound and vibration (both indoor and outdoor). There is an acoustics testing chamber that conforms to ISO/BS/ASTM standards for testing sound transmission loss, sound absorption and machine sound power.

Advanced Air-conditioning and Energy Storage Technology Laboratory

This laboratory consists of two experimental test rigs for carrying out both scientific and applied research on the advanced liquid desiccant dehumidification system and the novel three-phase absorption thermal energy storage system. The two test rigs are equipped with advanced data acquisition system, which can measure and collect a large number of physical and chemical properties for characterizing and modeling of the two types of system. The test rigs can also facilitate the development and test of the control methods/strategies.

Advanced Cooling System Laboratory

The laboratory aims to provide a platform for students to conduct scientific research, experiments and measurement on advanced cooling technologies. The facilities can be used to evaluate surface energy and thermal behaviour of advanced building envelopes and to investigate advanced solar PV glazing technologies.

Advanced Thermal and Environmental Engineering Laboratory

The laboratory is equipped with ductless fume hood and clean booth to conduct experiments that involve the process sensitive to chemical and requiring extreme cleanliness, for fabricating and characterizing devices and materials related to indoor environmental quality. A set of aerosol generation and characterization equipment, a microscope imaging system as well as a wind tunnel with high-speed camera allow researchers to analyse the relevant structure and fluid flow.

Building Energy and Automation Research Laboratory

The Building Energy and Automation Research Laboratory facilitates research on building energy efficiency and the use of modern IT/computing technologies to improve building energy performance. It has developed a building system online performance simulation platform and a building automation control and diagnosis strategy online test platform, in addition to various tools for building performance diagnosis and optimisation. Developing and managing a centralised energy monitoring and assessment platform to monitor and control the energy performance of PolyU’s campus buildings, the lab also helps many local developers and building owners to develop optimal and energy-efficient control strategies and optimised control instrumentation solutions to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings.

Built Environment Simulation Laboratory

The Built Environment Simulation Laboratory is designed for teaching and research purposes. The Laboratory is equipped with the state-of-the-art facilities for cross-platform game engine development of building simulation and implementation in immersive virtual reality (IVR), augmented reality (AR) as well as mixed reality (MR). High dynamic range (HDR) panoramic cameras and LiDAR scanners are provided for generating 3D visualization and other VR applications in environmental design. In addition, high-resolution VR retina displays and other multi-media devices are available for experiments and CGI projects.

Carbon Neutral Building Laboratory

The laboratory aims to provide a research platform for students to conduct experiments and measurement on thermally-regulated constructed surfaces. The facilities can be used to evaluate the optical properties of glazing technologies and constructed surfaces.

Colour and Illumination Laboratory

Facilities in the lab cover a wide range of testing, measurement, and calibration equipment and protocols for various imaging systems, including cameras, displays, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality systems. In addition, various tunable lighting equipment can be used to carry out experiments to better understand how the human beings respond to light and color stimuli under different viewing conditions. These can be used to develop metrics for different imaging systems and also to further our understanding about the human visual system.

Design and Development Centre

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and drafting form an important part of the Department’s teaching programmes. The facilities in our Design and Development Centres include the latest Pentium computers and various plotting and printing facilities linked by a LAN. Peripherals include scanners, digitisers, large plotters and various printing facilities. It also provides computing facilities for our BEEE students.

Electrical Services Laboratory

Facilities in the electrical services lab are suitable for testing and commissioning electrical installations, testing electrical equipment, conducting power quality analyses (harmonics, transients, etc.) and electro-magnetic field measurements and lightning detecting and monitoring systems, among others.

Fire Engineering Laboratory

There are two fire chambers that can conduct large-scale burning tests up to 1 MW and are well-equipped with instruments to measure temperature, smoke motion, fire heat release rate, material flammability and fire emission toxicity. Various fire protection systems are installed to evaluate fire suppression performances. Wind tunnels are available for evaluating the thermal sensitivities of sprinkler heads and fire detectors. The newly developed Digital Twin system can monitor the real-time fire scene and forecast future fire development. 

HVACR Laboratory

Air conditioning systems provide comfortable interior thermal environments for building occupants. The process involves the removal of heat and humidity by different types of air handling equipment. Fans are used to distribute the conditioned air to various interior zones of a building through air ducts. In the HVAC lab, students can study the operating characteristics of fans and the air-flow disturbance along an air duct using the Fan Test Rig and the Air Duct and Damper Test Rig. Other experimental equipment includes a Refrigeration Laboratory Unit, a Bench Top Cooling Tower and an Air Conditioning Laboratory Unit.

Indoor Air Quality (Bioaerosal) Laboratory

The Laboratory at Biological Safety Level 2 (BSL-2) is equipped with a Class II biological safety cabinet, as stated in the “Guidelines on Biosafety in the Clinical Laboratory” issued by the Department of Health (2005). The lab is also equipped with a wide range of bioaerosol sampling facilities for laboratory and field studies, including single stage impactors, Anderson samplers, biotest RCS plus, an incubator and an autoclave.

Indoor Environmental Quality Laboratory

Most of the test rigs in this lab are portable, comprising various gas analysers, temperature, humidity and air flow sensors for measurements in occupied spaces, on air-side systems, etc. The manikin is an important piece of equipment for investigating thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Integrated analysis of the data in different areas such as thermal comfort, indoor air quality and subjective human responses can be carried out.

​Intelligent Building Laboratory

The Intelligent Building (IB) Laboratory facilities include a comprehensive IB system, a full set of building automation systems, test rigs for IoT-enabled building automation, VR and AI-enable building energy facility management, grid-interactive building technology and energy-flexible building technologies as well as a variety of measurement instruments for building energy monitoring. The IB lab provides test facilities for teaching and learning as well as for R&D on intelligent building technologies, the development of advanced building system control, energy management, diagnosis strategies and communication software.

Lighting Laboratory

The Lighting Lab’s goniophotometer, integrating sphere and spectroradiometer help to characterise various photometric (e.g., luminous flux, luminous intensity distribution) and colourimetric (e.g., spectral power distribution, correlated colour temperature, chromaticity coordinates, CIE Colour Rendering Index, IES TM-30-15, etc.) quantities for light sources and luminaires. The High Dynamic Range Imaging System allows us to perform luminance and glare analyses for exterior and interior luminous environmental assessments. In addition, the 14-channel spectrally tunable LED lighting system, spectroradiometer, spectrophotometer and standard viewing booth allow us to simulate different lighting conditions and to perform colour characterisation using different materials and surface colours.

Lightning Physics and Protection Laboratory

This lab facilitates research on the formation, detection of and protection from lightning. It includes various instruments specially designed for lightning research, such as slow and fast antennae and a magnetic loop antenna for measuring lightning-caused electric fields, a lightning location system, high-speed camera, broadband interferometer system and lightning current measuring system. It also includes various instruments for general use, such as high-speed oscilloscopes and data recorders. Due to the nature of lightning, these instruments are usually installed in fields outside the lab for experiments during the summer. The lab also has various sets of software for modelling lightning processes.

Low-carbon Building Technology Laboratory

The Low-carbon Building Technology Laboratory consists of a stainless-steel cladded environmental chamber the size of a typical office, and a stand-alone air-conditioning system. The chamber also has following provisions:

(a) two types of air distribution methods;

(b) Radiant ceiling panels

(c) Thermal manikins, heat and moisture sources

The lab accommodates a variety of experimental studies.

Multi-Function Chamber Laboratory

The Multi-Function Chamber Laboratory is equipped with a main heating and cooling plant comprising a chiller, a boiler, hot and chilled water pumps, an air handling plant and a main supervisory control and data acquisition centre. The temperature, relative humidity and air-flow within the chamber can be precisely controlled over a wide range of set-point conditions for various precision measurements.

Piped Services Laboratory

This lab provides facilities for testing and commissioning building water supply and drainage systems. Bench-scale test rigs are set up to assess the performance and efficiency of various system components.

Renewable Energy Laboratory

Established in August 2014, the lab enables fundamental and applied research on solar energy materials and green building materials in collaboration with industry and leading academic institutions, providing advanced and innovative technological solutions for the generation of renewable energy and a sustainable built environment.

RISE Academic Studio

RISE Academic Studio is a functional space well equipped with video and audio facilities to support face-to-face and online academic exchanges and functions of different natures and at different levels.

Solar Simulation Laboratory

The lab provides facilities for testing solar energy devices for thermal and photovoltaic applications. The solar simulator is mainly used for the research and development of solar energy applications in buildings, product tests of solar energy equipment and heat loss measurements of various building façade elements and devices.