The market is huge. Between the growing and essential demand (some regions of the world can not help but install air cooling systems to live) and the impact that current systems have on the environment, engineers and investors rush to take their share of the (future) cake. Blue Frontier was born in 2018 and its investment round is only a Series A. This is to say the craze.
India, China and Indonesia are the geographical areas where the carbon impact of air conditioning is the greatest, as the number of installations increases. According to the Xerox research center in Palo Alto, in collaboration with the United States Department of Energy, 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked to air conditioning systems and their refrigerants.
How the air conditioning of tomorrow will work
Blue Frontier relied on research on anthrax disease, also called anthrax, a very serious infectious disease that could become a real terrorist weapon. To counteract its transmission, engineers have developed new, very powerful liquid desiccants, capable of removing any humidity present in the air in an even more effective way than current refrigerant liquids allow.
Its relationship with air conditioning, the liquid holds it in the fact that our current conventional systems consume even more energy to reduce the humidity in the air than to cool a space. Out of 1,950 million tonnes of CO2 released by systems around the world, 531 million would be used to cool the air while 599 million would only be used to reduce humidity.
Finding a more efficient system to reduce this superfluous part of consumption was therefore essential. Especially since 820 million tonnes of CO2 are linked in particular to refrigerant leaks.
The air conditioning of tomorrow, according to Blue Frontier, will leave no possibility of leakage while the liquid refrigerant will never be in contact with the air. Only the desiccant liquid, derived from the work on anthrax, will be. The startup presents it as an advantage while in addition to reducing humidity, the product will also kill bacteria (its primary function). “One of the benefits of Blue Frontier air conditioning technology would be an overall improvement in indoor air quality and a healthier indoor environment”said Blue Frontier CEO Daniel Betts.
A final advantage to the system will be that of carrying energy storage, where traditional air conditioners can no longer operate when the energy starts to run out. A way to avoid using electricity in times of high demand, when many countries use coal-fired power plants to support demand.