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Mark Platt, Multistack, left and Michael Christensen, US State Dept, right (click on images to view larger)

Updated 16:30  Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Wednesday was the 39th annual Earth Day in the US, which explains much of the flurry of talks, blogs and activities designed to get us thinking along greener, cleaner lines. The Huffington Post carried blogs by filmmaker Robert Redford on taking a stand, and author Michael Pollen, who praises the new vegetable garden at the White House, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt.

Meanwhile, here in Geneva, the US Mission to the United Nations put into operation a piece of new technology that will contribute significantly to Geneva’s reputation as a green city and to the United States government’s efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of its embassies and missions. The State Department sees Geneva as an ideal place to spotlight emerging green technologies because of its reputation as an environmental centre, US staff say, but also because during the past four years the Mission has developed excellent working relations with the canton’s energy department and Geneva’s SIG (industrial services) department. “They’re very forward thinking,” says Michael Christensen, a green engineer from the US State Department, who praises SIG’s efforts “to do everything they can to prevent fossil fuel use.”

Hillary Clinton met with international diplomats in Washington to discuss “Greening Diplomacy” where she mentioned the US Geneva’s Mission and its new air conditioning system.

Geneva’s US Mission goes for maglev air conditioners

The Mission’s new air conditioning system gives the US an opportunity to showcase cutting edge technology, an air cooling chiller system that uses no lubrication oil and a minimal amount of refrigerant in comparison to typical chilling systems. It is a long-awaited commercial application of a solution to a decades-old engineering dilemma of how to maintain a magnetic levitation motor shaft within microscopic tolerances. Magnetic levitation dates back to the 1940s, but nanotechnology was required for this step.

The Mission’s new air conditioning system makes a larger statement, reinforcing Geneva’s role for the US as its “flagship post for energy and sustainability,” a title given to it in 2005. At that point the Mission was designated as the site for the largest solar energy project ever undertaken by the US State Department. The main building of the complex is covered with solar panels that also serve as awnings for the windows under them, incorporated into (and possibly improving) the design of the nearly 30-year-old building.

The initial press contact about this latest energy venture was mostly puzzling, though.

The US Mission in Geneva is getting a new air conditioning system, cutting edge green technology, I was told.  Magnetic levitation cooling? Air-cooled flying carpets came to mind, then I remembered maglev trains in Japan and Germany. But how do you get from those streamlined floating trains to air conditioning? Frankly, it is hard to get excited about air conditioning systems unless you live in a hot country, which Switzerland is not. And isn’t it a bit ironic to turn on air conditioners on Earth Day, when we should supposedly try to turn off more things, I wondered.

The digital life is a hot one, so clean air cooling systems are a global must

Then I remembered how much my apartment heated up when I moved my office from a building down the road into what used to be the children’s bedrooms. In came the computers, big printer, scanner, telephones, fax, TV, radio and other electronic doodads, and up went the temperature. I turned off two radiators and put the heat down because the machines were warming up the place.

All offices are toasty places thanks to our digital lives. Research by UK analysts BroadGroup showing that heating and cooling costs of data centres are 50 times higher than those for office blocks. The US Mission, like any large office complex with conference rooms heated by large numbers of people, as well as servers and employee computers and other hardware, needs to be cooled down so people can work efficiently and the machines will operate optimally.

“There’s nothing as energy efficient as off,” smiles Mark Platt, CEO of Wisconsin-based Multistack, which holds the patent on the new system installed in Geneva, but in the real world we’re often on. The new Mission system’s units function as a kind of chain, turning on one after the other only as they are needed.

Michael Christensen, green engineer for the State Department, says “We’re aware of the paradox in turning on the system on Earth Day,” but computers are here to stay, and they must be cooled, preferably in an enregy-efficient way.

How to chill out, without oil

MagLev Chiller, Mark Platt: electronic controls are at the front

Enter Multistack with the first large-tonnage magnetic levitation cooling system in Europe – one was installed at the US Mission in Tokyo in 2007, using earlier technology – which frankly deserves a round of applause. “Offices use up to 50 percent of the world’s electricity, and 30 percent of that is air conditioning,” says Platt. The MagLev Chiller reduces the air conditioning energy load by 30 percent compared to the old air conditioning system. It doesn’t use fossil fuels oil for lubrication: the shaft floats, and by splitting the amount of power needed into three smaller modules, or units which are stacked together, maximum efficiency can be achieved. The modules are designed to be shut down one by one when not needed.

“We’re now carbon neutral on our energy here,” says Christensen of the Geneva complex. He says the US State Department wants to focus on energy sustainability, not just energy efficiency.

Other green pluses:

• The chiller sends the heat it pulls from the air back to the outside air rather than into a water system, as traditional air cooling does. It avoids the management and treatment of some 2,500 litres of water, a process that uses energy.
• The Mission’s photovoltaic panels produce energy equivalent to the amount needed to run the new system, making the MagLev system essentially carbon neutral, not the case for the old air conditioners.
• The Maglev Compressor is a relatively lightweight 127 kg (280 pounds), about a quarter of the weight of a traditional chiller, and the new system takes up a fraction of the building space of the old system.
• The old chillers had reached the end of their 25-year lifespan and as old refrigerators and other appliances tend to do, they were operating less efficiently and turning into energy hogs – the new technology puts no wear and tear on the equipment, so it functions as efficiently at the end as at the beginning.
• Traditional air conditioners are designed for peak performance on the hottest days of the year, but most of the time they operate at a median performance level, what Platt describes as “800kW machines so you can get 400kW.” The maglev system creates machines designed to operate for lower cooling needs, but able to gear up when needed.

Here’s how it works

Roughly speaking, your average air conditioner has a compressor that heats freon gas, turning it to liquid, after which it returns to a low-pressure cool gas state, and as it cools down it runs through coils that allow it to absorb heat and thus cool a room. The compressor is lubricated by oil, just as a car’s motor’s shaft is. The MagLev Chiller has a virtually friction-free compressor which eliminates heat and reduces energy consumption: the shaft and compressor turbine spins suspended and centred in an electromagnetic field. The environmental damage caused by oil use and disposal are avoided. Water cooling units become a thing of the past, so there is no need for a cooling tower and hazardous biocides and anticorrosion chemicals are avoided. The Geneva complex has a series of modular Chillers.

The technology breakthrough came thanks to nanosecond-fast computers. These control electronically the motor shaft, with a tolerance the equivalent of only seven human hairs. That microscopic control is essential for magnetic levitation shaft rotation, as opposed to earlier linear-only use.

Platt says households are not likely to adopt maglev chillers in the near future unless they are very large. Multistack has installed the systems at home for Bill Gates and in the theatre studio for David Letterman (cool air makes for crisper sound), but the Gates home, he points out, is 4,500m2.

Platt laughs at his first encounter with magnetic levitation technology, when he was a young salesman straight out of engineering school. He was impressed by the new technology, but it was riddled with problems and older colleagues laughed at his pleasure over selling it, saying he would soon find out the price he had to pay. “I was the stupid new kid and I sold those new machines – and then I had to learn to fix the problems!” The payoff has been 40 percent annual growth, down this year to 15 percent growth in a rougher economy, says Platt.

US Mission in Geneva: blue solar panels shade windows below; Mark Platt and Michael Christensen

The company is working with the State Department on other innovative energy projects, one of which is a “dedicated heat recovery chiller” in Santiago, Chile. “Any air conditioning system produces heat and we need to use that,” he argues. “We are taking the waste heat from computers and putting it into radiators and using them for hot water.” He refers to MultiStack as the “only carbon neutral manufacturer,” to his knowlege. After six months, the Santiago project has resulted in a $47,000 savings in energy costs, a significant reduction in CO2 produced and no fossil fuels are being used now that the boiler is turned off.

Related:

Mark Storella, US Mission chargé d’affaires, video clip on Facebook, about the new technology

US Mission in Geneva blog by intern Belinda Yong