A 19th Century Discovery Opens New Approaches to HVAC

HVAC is a costly part of running a building and a large expense in energy and carbon emissions. A company called Phononic is using a discovery from the 19th century to change the way a number of applications heat and cool, including HVAC.

It’s not a magic bullet and, for building owners, involves some tradeoffs on upfront costs versus savings over time. But it is in commercial use and might be a consideration for some in CRE, particularly as pressure grows from regulators and investors who want carbon emissions reductions.

The underlying principle behind the technology is called the Peltier effect. Discovered in 1834 by French physicist Jean-Charles-Athanase Peltier, it describes what happens when two dissimilar conductors, called a thermocouple, are bonded together, and an electrical current is passed through the device. Depending on the direction of the current, the device generates cold or heat.

What Phononic does is bond many of these thermocouples, made of bismuth and telluride, together into devices to manage temperatures. “You can turn them on or off as necessary,” chief product officer Larry Yang told GlobeSt.com. In addition to these solid-state devices — no moving parts or refrigerants required — are IoT (Internet of Things) control software and heat exchangers. The heat exchanges transfer the heat to air or liquid cooling systems to appropriately apply or remove heat.

The technology is already in various uses, like cooling lasers at the ends of fiber optical cables in telecommunications and in data centers to cool the servers.

The company has an installation in Paris, France — a 100,000-square-foot building with five floors. Yang explained that instead of the large rooftop chiller that helps process air that is then distributed throughout a building, this one has a smaller chiller that partly cools the air. The partially chilled air is distributed throughout the building. Instead of depending on the single temperature of the air, though, a separate Phononic device is in each room. This way, there is no need to bring all rooms down to the desired temperature, whether the room is in use and needs it or not. Yang said that their systems deliver an 18% lower cost of operation and a 16% reduction in emissions from traditional technology.

However, it can take ten years to achieve the full savings, he added. While the devices don’t last that long, they save not only in total energy costs but also in repair and maintenance.

It also takes advanced planning to understand whether such a system makes financial sense because there are higher costs at the start. You have to consider the time value of the investment, the payoff period, and whether or not it will deliver enough value for the property owner.