Back in October 2014, RACCA Australia published an article on Emerson Climate Technologies breaking ground on its US$35 million innovation center. Now the innovation center is open.
The Helix Innovation Center, which officially opened on 27 April, is based on the University of Dayton Campus and will focus on five HVAC/R industry markets–supermarket refrigeration, food service operations, residential connected homes, data center themeral management and light commercial buildings. Due to this focus, the Innovation Center contains a supermarket, a commercial kitchen, a house, a data center space, as well as the facility itself as a commercial building.
The supermarket contains refrigerated gases, dry goods shelving and integrated controls which includes lighting and point-of-sales systems.
The commercial kitchen is designed and built to tackle various issues in the food service industry. These issues include but are not limited to new refrigerants and safety.
The house is two-storey with three bedrooms, which would have a temperature control system to simulate different seasons and climates.
The data center space will be used to develop cooling technologies and controls to improve energy efficiency. The Innovation Center building will be used to conduct research on innovations in the heating, ventilation and cooling of commercial buildings.
According to Emerson Climate Technologies’ media release on the Innovation Center’s opening, the Innovation Center also features the Grind2Energy system, which is Emerson’s groundbreaking solution to turn food waste into energy.
Bob Sharp, Executive Vice President of Emerson Climate Technologies, explained why Emerson Climate Technologies invested in the Innovation Center, in the media release.
“There are some big things happening in our industry right now and we are playing a lead role in many of them. Initiatives like the connected home, the industrial Internet of Things, intelligent stores, new system architectures that can work with natural refrigerants and ultra-efficient air conditioning systems. To stay on the forefront, our approach is to look at the entire environment our customers operate in.”
The media release also states that the Innovation Center will focus on rapidly advancing ideas from concept to prototype and will do this through collaboration with customers, industry partners, competitors and experts from other industries.
The media release also states that Emerson Climate Technologies plans for the Innovation Center to be a global hub of industry education, with the Innovation Center containing three learning labs, as well as the modules, with plans to host industry meetings and forums for HVAC/R professionals on-site.
The Helix Innovation Center’s official website can be found here.