In the context of increasingly common high-temperature and high-humidity weather around the world, the air-conditioned environments in shopping malls, restaurants and office buildings that are often overcooled are becoming one of the typical scenarios of high energy consumption. In hot and humid areas such as the southern United States, the burden of air conditioning often comes not only from cooling, but also from extensive dehumidification to prevent mold growth.
“A lot of commercial buildings are running air conditioners like crazy because they want to keep the humidity down,” Sorin Gramma, co-founder and CEO of startup Transaera Grama) said, "Sometimes the supply air will be made very cold, and the air will eventually be heated back."
To this end, Transaera has developed a new type of ventilation equipment, which is said to be significantly better than existing technology in dehumidification efficiency, and is expected to help users reduce energy consumption and save operating costs. Amazon has been testing the device in Houston, USA, for several months and recently signed on as a customer. Granma revealed that the company's current procurement target amount from various customers has reached a "nine-digit" scale, and this cooperation with Amazon has locked in production capacity for the next three years. “Amazon treats this as a design-level solution,” he said. “Once they verify that a certain solution is effective, they will write it into their own building design standards, and then replicate and promote it throughout the building assets.”
This device belongs to what the industry calls a “Dedicated Outdoor Air System” (DOAS) product. Its core function is to continuously deliver fresh air indoors while significantly reducing the load on the main air conditioning system. A single unit can remove approximately 100 pounds of moisture from the air per hour, eliminating the need for air conditioners to run at high load for long periods of time to remove moisture. The DOAS concept itself is not new, but Transaera says its product can be about twice as efficient at dehumidifying as existing systems.
Transaera’s “secret sauce” is a moisture-absorbing material that coats a giant wheel inside the device, which is about 6 feet in diameter and spins continuously at a slow speed. Gramma describes the material as "like silicone, but stronger on steroids." The company has not disclosed the exact formula, saying only that it is based on a class of materials systems that will win its discoverers a Nobel Prize in 2025. Relevant papers and data show that this type of new material is extremely selective and reversible in adsorbing water, and is an important breakthrough in the fields of chemistry and materials science in recent years.
From the working principle, when outdoor air is introduced into the equipment, it will first pass through the wheel coated with hygroscopic agent, where the moisture is quickly "pulled out" of the air flow. The dehumidified air then passes through a heat exchanger and is sent into the building. At the same time, the dirty air extracted from the room carries heat and flows to the other side. Through the heat exchanger and moisture absorption wheel, the heat is transferred to the area that was previously filled with moisture. This heat will release the moisture in the hygroscopic material and discharge it to the outside, allowing the material to be "regenerated" and enter the next cycle of moisture absorption.
Amazon said the introduction of Transaera’s DOAS equipment will help the company reduce building energy consumption and advance its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. For Amazon, which has a large network of warehouses and office buildings, the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system is an important part of the overall energy consumption. Any efficiency improvement in the dehumidification link will translate into considerable energy and cost savings in long-term operations.
In the manufacturing process, Transaera chose to cooperate with existing HVAC manufacturers, including domestic companies in the United States, to jointly produce this equipment. The company designs its proprietary moisture wicking system to be built directly into commercial HVAC units with common industry specifications. "For many customers, this is almost a one-to-one replacement of an old device with a new one," Grama said. "I think this 'plug and play' replacement experience is an important reason for the rapid growth in demand."