By Bella Kubach, The Invading Sea
As global temperatures rise, the demand to stay cool is higher than ever. In sunny South Florida, air conditioning is a staple year-round in its subtropical climate.
However, air conditioning is responsible for nearly 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. About half of that percentage is caused by the energy A/C units use to control the temperature and remove humidity.
But Daniel Betts, founder and CEO of Blue Frontier, might have found a way to make air conditioning more sustainable for the environment by manufacturing a technology that uses global warming as its solution.
Blue Frontier, a Boca Raton-based startup, created the world’s first packaged Liquid Desiccant-Enhanced Outdoor Air System, or LD-DOAS.
The conventional A/C model uses refrigerant to create cooling, but many refrigerants can damage the ozone layer and create greenhouse gas emissions.
This is how Blue Frontier’s system differs. It uses a salt solution called a liquid desiccant.
“It has this characteristic that when you put the salt solution in contact with the air, it will suck the humidity right out of the air and bring it into a solution, diluting itself,” Betts said.
Once the humidity is sucked out of the air and it’s dry, Blue Frontier’s system takes a portion of it, passes it through alternative channels in a heat exchanger and evaporates the water.
In the alternative channels, the process of the evaporation of the water cools down the air.
“You end up with this dry, cool air,” Betts said.
According to Betts, Blue Frontier’s model allows users to control humidity and temperature independent of each other, giving them the ability to find their ideal comfort point.
But what’s more significant than the LD-DOAS’ comfort is its environmental impact. “I can store the salt solution in the high concentration state we use without needing electricity,” Betts said.
As long as the unit can store a high concentration of the salt solution, A/C can be produced with almost no electricity required. All that the salt solution needs to increase its concentration is heat.
“The hotter it is outside, the less electricity I need to recharge the liquid desiccant. Therefore, I am reducing the amount of electricity I consume the more you need it,” Betts said. “In fact, I’m giving you more cooling when you need it the most with less electricity.”
Blue Frontier’s LD-DOAS is competitively priced compared to other high-efficiency commercial dedicated outdoor air systems, according to the company. However, Betts said the unit produces large amounts of savings.
“If you were to look at the time it takes for you to recover your increased cost of our unit, it lands between three to five years, and that’s just looking at it from an energy savings standpoint,” Betts said. “So … a three-to-five-year period to recover your savings for a product that lives for 15 to 20 years is a very good return on investment.”
The product can be used in most climates, ranging from arid to tropic. Since the desiccant regenerates with heat, the system becomes more efficient with outdoor temperatures increasing.
“If we can solve the problem of producing cooled air more efficiently, that’s a huge step in the right direction for that piece of the climate challenge,” said Ryan Rutledge, vice president of strategy and innovation at Joules Accelerator, a nonprofit organization based in Charlotte, North Carolina, that supports early-stage climate tech startups.
Joules Accelerator has been one of Blue Frontier’s partners since 2021.
Rutledge said that Blue Frontier’s technology is working at one “chunk of the puzzle” that is climate change. But, he said, “It’s a significant piece of that puzzle.”
Blue Frontier’s unit reduces non-fan air conditioning electricity consumption by up to 90%, according to the company. It also reduces the global warming potential impact of refrigerant by 85%.
Rutledge thinks that Blue Frontier’s product is especially promising because it’s affordable and sustainable.
“I think they stand at the front of the pack in terms of these new HVAC technologies coming along,” Rutledge said.
Blue Frontier partnered with South Florida-based Mangrove Contracting to help with the installation, maintenance and support of their A/C units.
Right now, Blue Frontier’s product is targeted toward businesses, but will eventually work toward expanding to residential spaces in the future. They have worked with several businesses; however, these partnerships have not been released to the public yet.
“In the next coming months, we’re going to start making them more public,” Betts said.
Bella Kubach is a Florida Atlantic University senior majoring in multimedia journalism who is reporting for The Invading Sea during the spring 2024 semester.
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