Cool by nature

Abstract

Purix is a Danish start-up company with a production facility in Bari. Their product is a 2,5kW absorption chiller system for small businesses and consumers. The market area will be Italy in the first place with extension to other southern European markets. The high temparatures and solar irradiation make Southern Eu- rope a very suitable market for the Purix chiller. Consumer and businesses will have a return on investment of approximately 6 years compared to efficient vapour compressed air conditioning units, because of the low electrical energy consumption of the chiller. Purix aims to deliver the first affordable all inclusive solar air-con- ditioning unit including fan-coil and solar heat panels. At the start- ing point of this industrial design project, all components have been sized and some choices where made for product assem- bly. However no attention was yet set on the overall assembly, framing and enclosure of the product. Purix aimed for a high end product appearance while respecting an extremely tight budget. A lot of effort has been added into cost saving and simplification of components while remaining the simplicity and elegance of the first generated product concepts. An additional challenge is the small starting series. A full scale visual model has been build in Delft to check material choices and fastener locations and chosen assem- bly method. although the available tooling was not sufficient and comparable to the possibilities for series production, the shape and construction worked as expected. The clamping profile has been a good choice to define prod- uct contours, close small production tolerances and protect users for sharp edges. Since this is Purix first product, sales still have to scale up. The design should therefor respect the possibility to make changes if component or assembly choices turn out to be non satisfac- tory. Therefor at this point of time the use of complicated molds is not an option. For that reason the enclosure is entirely build with single curved panels. The elegant naturally curved contour clamping profile gives the product shape and differentiation from conventional block shaped cooling units. The eccentric fan is hidden behind a sheet of stretched metal, this choice enables the product to be symmetric from all sides. The chiller is suitable for placement below the included solar heat panels or for stand-alone applications. A promising example of a stand alone application for Middle and Northern European countries is a connection to district heating instead of solar heat panels. Generally district heating is indus- trial waste heat and there is no market for it during summer.