By Eamonn Ryan
In a Blue Frontier product webinar hosted on the ASHRAE platform as part of the ASHRAE Journal Supplier Webinar Series, the company presented a fundamentally new vision for air conditioning. Led by Matthew Cruz, VP of sales, and Matthew Tillman, CTO, the session explored how HVAC systems can be redesigned to dramatically cut energy use while improving resilience, comfort and sustainability. This is part four of a six-part series.
In a technical deep dive during a Blue Frontier product webinar hosted on the ASHRAE platform, the company explained how its HVAC system reaches efficiency levels – up to 300% – that far exceed conventional vapour-compression technology.
Once humidity is controlled, dry-bulb temperature is adjusted independently using indirect evaporative cooling. Rawpixel | Freepik.com
Traditional HVAC systems become less efficient as outdoor temperatures rise. This is because they must work harder to move heat from a cooler indoor space to a hotter outdoor environment. Blue Frontier’s system behaves very differently: its efficiency actually increases as outdoor air becomes hotter and more humid.
This counterintuitive performance is achieved by combining liquid desiccant dehumidification with dew-point-driven indirect evaporative cooling. Instead of removing moisture by overcooling air below its dew point, the system removes humidity chemically using the desiccant. This avoids the energy-intensive overcool-and-reheat cycle common in dedicated outdoor air systems (DOAS).
Normally, desiccant systems suffer from adiabatic heat gain during dehumidification, which reduces effectiveness. Blue Frontier overcomes this by using indirect evaporative cooling to continuously remove that heat from the desiccant itself. This keeps the desiccant cool and highly effective, allowing the system to move straight down the psychrometric chart – removing moisture without adding unwanted heat.
Once humidity is controlled, dry-bulb temperature is adjusted independently using indirect evaporative cooling. This decoupling of sensible and latent control allows the system to deliver precise comfort conditions with far less energy input.
On the regeneration side, efficiency gains are amplified by reducing compressor lift. By running the same airstream over both the condenser and evaporator at similar temperatures, the system dramatically lowers the work required by the compressor. In some applications, regeneration can be driven entirely by waste heat, eliminating compressor use altogether.
During the ASHRAE platform webinar, Blue Frontier demonstrated that when operating in thermal storage or waste-heat modes, the system delivers full cooling capacity at energy inputs that are a fraction of those required by conventional systems. This is what enables the headline performance figures: 40–85% energy savings and up to three times the efficiency of standard HVAC.
