Cool​Heat unit

CoolHeat

Environmentally Friendly and Innovative Air Handling Unit

COOLHEAT is an environmentally friendly and innovative air handling unit equipped with a reversible CO₂ heat pump for optimal energy efficiency.

By offering heat pumps with CO₂ as the refrigerant in our air handling units, we contribute significantly to the green transition. CO₂ is a natural and eco-friendly refrigerant with a GWP of 1, free from PFAS, allowing a significant reduction in environmental impact compared to harmful synthetic refrigerants, which typically have a GWP between 1,700 and 2,200.

COOLHEAT ensures year-round comfort with an environmentally friendly CO₂ heat pump that can both cool and heat.

Since 2021, Unic Air has been working on developing COOLHEAT in collaboration with the Danish Technological Institute.

Air Handling Unit with Energy-Saving Heat Pump Solution

COOLHEAT is an air handling unit that not only uses a natural refrigerant but is also designed for the specific operating conditions of winter. Traditionally, air handling units are sized for maximum airflow during winter at -12°C. However, as most modern ventilation systems today are built as demand-controlled ventilation (VAV), a typical winter scenario involves airflow at about one-third of the designed capacity. This often results in oversizing the heating component, leading to inefficient regulation.

With COOLHEAT, we can size the heating component according to the actual need, avoiding the necessity of starting the large summer cooling compressor just to produce a few kilowatts of heat. COOLHEAT also ensures 100% utilization of passive free heat recovery before activating the heat pump. Additionally, the need for defrosting is minimized, further improving efficiency.

Eco-Friendly and Energy-Efficient Refrigerant Ideal Year-Round

CO₂ is a naturally occurring refrigerant with an extremely low Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1, making it a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional synthetic refrigerants. Using CO₂ as a refrigerant significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, lowering the climate impact and protecting the ozone layer.

Air handling units that use CO₂ as a refrigerant achieve high energy efficiency thanks to its thermodynamic properties, which ensure optimal heat exchange. This results in lower energy consumption for both cooling and heating. CO₂ performs efficiently in both low and high temperatures, making it an ideal solution for year-round operation.

When operating in subcritical mode, an air handling unit using CO₂ is approximately 15–20% more energy-efficient than units using traditional synthetic refrigerants. However, during transcritical operation, CO₂ can be 5–10% less efficient than synthetic refrigerants. That said, this scenario typically occurs only for a few hours annually on the hottest days of the year.

Future-Proof Air Handling Unit

With COOLHEAT, you get a future-proof air handling unit unaffected by the revised F-gas regulation, which has a clear objective of phasing out all harmful synthetic HFC and HFO refrigerants with a GWP above 150. This regulation will come into effect as early as 2027.

A significant advantage of using CO₂ as a refrigerant is that it is also PFAS-free, unlike almost all synthetic refrigerants, which contain PFAS and pose a serious threat to the environment and human health. Denmark is among the EU countries advocating for a total ban on PFAS, a step that could have major consequences for many HFC and HFO refrigerants.

Learn more about ventilation requirements here.