Partnership to expand high-efficiency cooling

USA: Kentucky-based KCC Manufacturing has formed a partnership with Transaera to scale US production of outdoor air systems using solid desiccants to remove moisture before cooling.

Transaera, originally a manufacturing startup out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, uses solid desiccants built on metal organic frameworks (MOFs). 

MOF materials are an advanced class of engineered sorbents which release moisture at far lower regeneration temperatures. The result is desiccant-class moisture removal on an all-electric heat-pump path, in a package that fits existing rooftop footprints. Transaera boasts 40% energy savings compared with conventional packaged DX-only systems, and reports that it has demonstrated more than double the current US minimum efficiency standard for moisture removal.

KCC engineers and builds the cabinet, supports implementation of Transaera’s proprietary controls, provides systems-design integration, and supplies the domestic manufacturing capacity behind the platform. 

Additional units are in production, with volume expected to grow as demand for high-efficiency, all-electric humidity control increases in commercial and multifamily buildings.

Humidity is an expensive problem in most commercial buildings. Conventional packaged rooftop equipment handles latent load by overcooling the air well below the temperature the space needs and then reheating it, a sequence that burns energy twice. Traditional desiccant systems avoid the overcool-and-reheat cycle but replace it with a regeneration penalty, since the desiccant must be driven to high temperature to be dried out and reused. 

“Latent load is where a lot of rooftop equipment quietly loses,” said Kevin Muldoon, Director of Research & Development at KCC. “What makes the MOF approach interesting is that it removes moisture at a much lower regeneration temperature, which is what puts an all-electric path to humidity control genuinely in reach. Our role has been to make sure the system around that core performs the way the material does.”

“Materials science wins in a lab. Products win on a roof, and getting from one to the other is a manufacturing problem,” said Joel Strieter, president of KCC Manufacturing. “Transaera solved the hard chemistry. Our job was to put that core inside a cabinet that can be built repeatably, controlled reliably, and serviced by a normal technician, and to build it here. That is the work that turns a breakthrough into something a building owner can actually buy.”

KCC’s scope spans the equipment around the MOF core. The company adapted its production dedicated outdoor air cabinet for the first-generation unit and is co-developing the next-generation cabinet with Transaera’s engineering team, and supports the electronics implementation of Transaera’s proprietary control sequences, along with the systems integration required to make the desiccant stage and the refrigeration stage behave as one machine. 

“We were never going to scale this by building cabinets ourselves,” said Sorin Grama, CEO and co-founder of Transaera. “KCC has been making dedicated outdoor air systems for decades, and they brought a production platform, a controls organisation, and real manufacturing capacity to a company our size.”

In May of this year, Transaera announced a multi-year collaboration with Amazon to expand deployment of its high-efficiency heat pump technology following a six-month field trial at an Amazon logistics facility in hot, humid conditions. 

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