Humidity sucks. Transaera has a new way to deal with it

“It’s not the heat that’s killing you, it’s the humidity,” my father said somewhere.

His kids might roll their eyes, especially in the event that they’ve spent any time within the desert Southwest in the course of the summer, but their dad is a minimum of partly right: high humidity not only makes people less convenientalso puts a strain on air-con units. Half of the energy used to power a typical air conditioner is used moisture removal from the air.

For firms like Amazon, Walmart, UPS and FedEx that operate massive warehouses, air-con is becoming a growing problem. Temperatures inside warehouses can rise to uncomfortable levels, potentially dangerously hot.

A startup is working on a solution to the moisture problem. Transaera is developing a unique air-con solution for homes and apartments that uses a special material to remove moisture before cooling the air. Since greater than 2 billion people in hot, humid regions still lack air-con, the corporate hopes it might help meet that demand while reducing the quantity of energy required.

But first, while it refines the buyer product, it’s rolling out larger units to industrial buildings like warehouses. On Tuesday, it installed the primary one on a customer’s roof, the corporate told TechCrunch exclusively. This dedicated outside air system (DOAS) dehumidifies fresh air coming into the constructing, reducing the workload on the air conditioner.

“DOAS is a small piece of the market, but it’s a growing segment,” co-founder and CEO Sorin Grama told TechCrunch. “It’s just an easier entry point.”

The Somerville, Mass.-based startup, founded in 2017, has raised $7.5 million to date, including $4.5 million in a seed round, Grama said. It is currently raising $6 million to support field trials of its hardware.

Transaera’s core technology is a proprietary material that covers the warmth pump’s heat exchangers, which resemble a automotive’s radiator. In Transaera’s DOAS, air entering the unit passes through a special material that removes moisture from the air. The drier air then passes to the evaporator coils, which cool the air to indoor temperatures.

Air conditioners and dehumidifiers generate heat within the technique of removing moisture from the air. Typically, this heat is wasted, but Transaera reuses it to remove moisture from the desiccant material on a porous wheel. As the wheel passes over the incoming air, it absorbs moisture. The loaded desiccant then spins away from the incoming air and thru the waste heat coming off the evaporator coils. The warm air carries unwanted moisture away from the air. In the winter, the system can reverse, helping to maintain indoor humidity as the warmth pump heats the incoming air.

Many other DOAS systems currently found on industrial roofs also use heat pumps to dehumidify supply air, but because they depend on low temperatures to condense water on coils, the air coming out of them will be too cool for what’s contained in the constructing (especially within the spring and fall, when temperatures will not be high enough to require air-con). The units then have to reheat the air, often using natural gas. “It’s a really inefficient, stupid way to do these dedicated outdoor air systems,” Grama said.

Transaera’s approach uses as much as 40% less energy than current top-of-the-line DOASs, he said. The company’s technology is currently on one industrial roof, but Grama said more shall be added soon. There is a few urgency: Because moisture removal requires a lot energy, it accounts for 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to last examination. That’s about half of what aviation generates, a sector that is come under much greater scrutiny. Cutting energy use from dehumidification by 40% would cut that significantly. Dad would approve.