Celebrating Innovations in Air Conditioning

Author: Kv Gopalakrishnan

We are a generation surrounded by technology, so much so that now we’ve started taking great inventions of the past for granted as if they were already a part of nature. The air conditioning system, which was once a luxury is now an essential part of our offices, factories, homes, public places and industries. Have you ever wondered how the concept of air conditioning even came about?

Contrary to what you may think, the first person to think of something even close to air conditioning, was not an engineer. Instead, it was a physician named Dr John Gorrie of Florida in the United States of America. He was greatly concerned about the rising temperature, and diseases like Malaria on the rise. He made a very basic system for cooling the hospital rooms where ice needed to be shipped to Florida from the Northern United States. He then proposed the concept of artificial cooling by designing a machine that created ice using a compressor that was held by a horse, water and wind-driven sail and steam. This was the beginning of air conditioning technology. In 1902, an engineer Willis Carrier who worked for the Buffalo Forge company made another breakthrough in air conditioning, when he was given a task to deal with humidity due to which magazine pages would wrinkle at a publishing company in Brooklyn.

After conducting a few experiments, he came up with a system that controlled humidity using cooling coils which could be used to both humidify and dehumidify a particular space. He further continued testing and refined his technology to devise a control system for regulation of temperature in textile mills – the beginning of Industrial Air conditioning.

Today, we live in a world where innovation is at its peak, and refrigerant-based air cooling has entered. Conventional evaporative cooling solutions are not solving our purpose anymore. With higher capex and opex, industrial air conditioners are not sustainable, as the technology is now.Hmx, a part of the A.T.E. group, specializes in a new cooling technology which is eco-friendly and energy efficient. HMX’s unique patented indirect evaporative cooling technology is quite superior to the single stage cooling in air washers that add moisture to space.

With all the information and research analysis we have in today’s times, it is great to say that we can truly create varieties in the innovations for air conditioning in the industrial spaces. Whether it is in a workplace full of people and heated computers, a university with lectures going on for the entire day, a public service office where there are a number of files to deliver on a daily basis, people working here must feel comfortable and cool!! In a textile factory which has to do a lot with machines and pigments or in a printing facility which has a lot to do with heating up due to printers and chemical fumes due to the cartridge, the production shouldn’t stop. The people working at these places need to be comfortable and enjoy their work which truly changes how the world runs. Industrial spaces are those areas where we spend most of our time in the day. They should be places we look forward to and are comfortable to work in. This is where Industrial air cooling comes into the picture. Live in the innovations of science and technology, and enter spaces that are sustainable, happy and under temperature control!