Town Talk | From Microsoft to Walmart, new KU research center on refrigerants is attracting strong interest from businesses | News, Sports, Jobs

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

The Marching Jayhawks performed at a celebration of the opening of KU’s latest research center on Nov. 7, 2024. U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is pictured in the background.

If you could have just one statistic to understand how good it is to be in the air-conditioning industry, it might be this one: About 3 billion people live in the hottest regions of the world, but currently only about 8% of them have air conditioning.

As new middle class economies emerge in countries like China, India, Africa and elsewhere, the industry estimates it will need to produce the equivalent of five air conditioners every second for the next 25 years to keep up with demand.

Leaders at the University of Kansas are betting that their researchers will play a big role in creating those high-efficiency, environmentally friendly air conditioners of the future. On Wednesday, some of the biggest companies on the planet showed signs of believing it too.

On Wednesday, KU hosted a large celebration and daylong symposium to officially launch its newest research center, the Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub, also known as EARTH.

As we reported in August, KU won a $26 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create the center. On Wednesday more than 100 researchers and industry executives from across the country attended the event at the Burge Union, and KU’s top leader said interest from major international companies in the venture has been “tremendous.”

“It has gotten the attention of a Walmart and a Microsoft,” KU Chancellor Douglas Girod told the Journal-World in a brief interview.

He said Microsoft has reached out to the university to learn more about how it could use technology from the venture to cool its data centers, which use many times more energy and refrigerant than a typical building — and also will become much more numerous in the age of artificial intelligence. As for Walmart, its thousands of stores have major cooling needs from air conditioners to the coolers in its grocery section.

The list of industry partners — KU has 28 officially signed up so far — also includes lesser-known names that are major players in the actual production of air conditioners and refrigerants. It is those businesses that are telling KU researchers they are on the verge of something big.

Mark Shiflett, director of the EARTH center, said industry leaders have told him if just one of KU’s specific ideas turns into a commercial product, it would produce hundreds of millions in sales. The EARTH center currently has 10 ideas it is working to bring to commercialization in its laboratories and offices, which are inside the School of Engineering complex on KU’s main Lawrence campus.

Which one is most likely to arrive first? It is too early to say, but Shiflett — who is considered a pioneer in the industry with past work at DuPont, where he was the inventor of a new refrigerant that is used in supermarket freezers around the world — highlighted some contenders.

Shiflett said KU has a chance to be the leader in an entirely new product line of devices that detect and alert homeowners and businesses of when their air conditioners are leaking refrigerant.

Such leaks can be bad for the environment and for your wallet. A leak of 10 pounds of refrigerant, which is a common amount for many air conditioners is equivalent to the same amount of carbon dioxide pollution as an individual driving their car for an entire year, Shiflett told the crowd. What’s more, leaks of that size are common because homeowners usually have no idea their air conditioner is leaking until so much refrigerant has escaped that they notice the unit is no longer cooling their home.

By then, the environmental damage is done, and the financial hit will soon come when you get the bill for the service call to completely recharge your AC unit.

“We are going to change that,” Shiflett said. “We are going to be able to tell you as soon as your air conditioner starts to leak. When you lose the first few grams, we are going to be able to tell you.”

Shiflett said the detection systems will be for both homes and buildings, and also for automobiles, predicting all cars some day will have a refrigerant warning light just like they have check engine lights today.

Girod also highlighted another effort: recycling of refrigerant. That research effort already has produced a new private company that is now located at KU’s Innovation Park on West Campus. Icorium Engineering is developing technology and equipment to recycle the used refrigerants in air conditioners and other devices. If it can become the leader in providing such technology to the industry, it could become one of KU’s most successful spin-off businesses ever.

“Every new (AC) unit coming out in the future will have to have to have a certain percentage of recycled refrigerant,” Girod said. “The market there is huge, but the supply is nonexistent.”

The other ideas that the EARTH center is researching also include similar opportunities to be trailblazers. That’s why Girod said the center has ambitions that go beyond the norm.

“I think the desire and the ambitious outcome of the project is really the creation of a new industry,” Girod said.

If successful, that could result in direct investment into the Lawrence economy by a multitude of private companies. KU has set up its Innovation Park property on West Campus to accommodate office buildings, laboratories and other facilities of private companies that want to be close to the researchers at KU. Refrigerant companies could soon be a leading contender to locate at the park, Girod said.

“Are they going to move their corporate headquarters here? Probably not,” Girod said. “But they may put teams of people here to take advantage of the research that is happening.”

Girod also said the research efforts should make the entire state a more attractive place for manufacturing plants for air conditioners. He said that would be particularly true if Kansas becomes a hub for refrigerant recycling because manufacturing companies will want to be close to the refrigerant source because shipping of such chemicals can be costly.

But first, the research has to advance, and that could take years. There are signs, though, that KU has the support of a key partner to see the project through. Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, was at KU on Wednesday to celebrate the opening of the EARTH center. It is the second time Panchanathan has visited KU. He noted that KU is the only university he has visited more than once in his role as NSF director. He’s been to the state three times on NSF visits, and he said Kansas is the only state he’s visited three times as NSF director.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, is currently the ranking Republican on the Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. That subcommittee is responsible for allocating federal funding to the NSF. Moran, after the results of Tuesday’s election that flipped control of the Senate to Republicans, is in line to become the chair of the Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee.

“Panch, the director, is only complimentary to me,” Moran told the crowd with a laugh. “He’s even nicer to me than the last time he was here.”

Afterward, Moran told the Journal-World that he does think KU and the EARTH project have a great opportunity to build upon the $26 million grant that KU received from NSF earlier this year. He said the grant opens the door to other grant opportunities if KU can deliver results.

“KU has done that time and time again,” he said.

KU is the lead university on the EARTH center, but does have collaborators from across the country, including at the University of Notre Dame, University of Maryland, University of Hawaii, University of South Dakota and Lehigh University. In total, the center is expected to have 42 faculty members from 16 academic disciplines, KU has previously said. KU has estimated the center will employ at least a dozen faculty and research staff members on the KU campus.

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