The Department of Refrigeration and Artificial Environment in Central South University was established by the former refrigeration section of Thermal Energy Department of Central South University of Technology and the former refrigeration and air conditioning section of Changsha Railway College, which is now under the management of School of Energy Science and Engineering, and responsible for the construction of double first-class undergraduate major of building environment and energy application engineering. There are 18 faculty members in the Department of Refrigeration and Artificial Environment, including 7 professors (6 doctoral supervisors) and 7 associate professors. 16 of them obtain doctoral degrees, coming from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hunan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, the United States, South China University of Technology and other famous universities at home and abroad. Several academic leaders have the experience of studying abroad in Technical University of Denmark, Ruhr University Bochum, University of Minnesota and other famous overseas universities. The faculty members have strong complementary knowledge, rich teaching experience, active academic thinking and sufficient research funds, which has created a certain foundation for the cultivation of students' innovation ability and vocational education. The courses include "engineering thermodynamics", "refrigeration principle and equipment", "refrigeration compressor", "low temperature principle", "Introduction to architecture", "new progress of refrigeration and air conditioning and building energy conservation (bilingual)", "principle and application of building energy conservation", "special topic of biological heat and mass transfer (bilingual)", "building environment", "heat driven refrigerator", "food freezing and refrigeration equipment", "building equipment automation", "air cleaning technology", "refrigeration and air conditioning equipment automation", "HVAC" and "HVAC frontier lecture". Among them, "engineering thermodynamics" was originally the excellent construction course of Central South University, and now is one of the first batch of excellent demonstration and development courses of Central South University. At present, there are many laboratories, such as refrigeration compressor performance test bench, air conditioning enthalpy difference performance laboratory, air quality detection and pollution control laboratory, etc. It is planned to build a comprehensive experimental platform for novel air conditioning system and a comprehensive experimental platform for cryogenic engineering. The experimental area is more than 500 square meters, including 157 sets of various instruments and equipments with a total value of about 8.5 million yuan. In the past five years, the Department of Refrigeration and Artificial Environment has presided over 5 national key R&D projects, 21 projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, 9 projects of the Ministry of Railways and Railway Corporation, 9 research projects of National Defense, 5 key R&D projects of Hunan Province, and more than 100 school-enterprise cooperation projects.

The main honors include National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation, Ministry of Education New Century Talents Support Program, Hunan Outstanding Youth Fund, Huo Yingdong Education Foundation Young Teachers Award in Colleges and Universities, Environmental Science Youth Science and Technology Award, Shenghua Distinguished Professor of Central South University, Sublimation Talents Program of Central South University, etc.

The social part-time jobs of full-time faculty mainly include Vice Chairman of Indoor Environment and Health Branch of Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, Vice Chairman of Indoor Air Quality Branch of Chinese Society of HVAC, Editorial Board Member of international academic journal "Indoor and Built Environment", Editorial Board Member of American Society of Environmental Sciences Journal of "Journal of IEST", Editorial Board Member of "Building Thermal Ventilation and Air Conditioning", and Editorial Board Member of "Vacuum and cryogenic".

In the past five years, more than 200 research papers have been published on "ES&T", "Environmental Research", "Environmental Pollution", "Science of the Total Environment", "Building and Environment", "Chemosphere", "International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer", "Applied Thermal Engineering", and "Energy Conversion and Management".

The main research areas:

1. Novel refrigeration and air conditioning technology and equipment;

2. Indoor and outdoor environment of the building and human health and thermal comfort;

3. Thermal comfort and energy conservation of rail vehicles;

4. Air quality and air pollution control;

5. Cryomedicine and health;

6. Novel energy storage technology and equipment;

7. Energy conservation and noise reduction of small refrigeration equipment;

8. The technology and system of thermal management system for national defense oriented energy equipment;

9. Artificial environment simulation, optimization and intelligent control technology.