• AHR Expo 2025
    AHR Expo 2025
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With more than 1,800 exhibitors and 50,000 attendees, last week’s AHR Expo 2025

Q-Pac fan installation.
Q-Pac fan installation.

was a massive showcase of the latest HVACR technologies.

From heat pumps and boilers to chillers and refrigeration systems, the focus was on products that reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption.

This theme reflects the growing push toward decarbonisation and the need to improve energy efficiency while also reducing operational expenses.

Speaking at the Orlando event, Jim Macosko, vice president of product and sustainability solutions at Daikin Applied, said the global demand for decarbonised HVAC systems has grown exponentially.

He said Daikin Applied’s approach to decarbonisation is built on three key pillars: advanced low-GWP refrigerants to reduce environmental impact, high-efficiency equipment powered by inverter compressors to optimise energy performance, and electrified heating using heat pump technology to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Daikin Applied unveiled a lineup of new low-GWP solutions at the show, committing to use R-32 in applications that previously used R-410A.

As a single-component refrigerant, R-32 boasts a two-thirds lower GWP compared to R-410A, and is easy to top off, recharge and reclaim in the field.

Macosko said Daikin’s inverter compressors feature variable-speed permanent magnet motors that optimise energy efficiency by adjusting motor speed to maintain temperature, rather than cycling on and off.

This reduces energy consumption while ensuring consistent, high-performance cooling and heating.

Westermeyer Industries used the expo to introduce the "TOS-Series" Centrifugal Oil Separators designed for use with CO2 refrigeration systems.

Gary Westermeyer, founder and president of Westermeyer Industries, was instrumental in developing the centrifugal oil separator, a design widely used in the refrigeration industry for decades.

Now, Westermeyer Industries has introduced a first-of-its-kind centrifugal oil separator designed for use in CO2 systems at transcritical pressures, updating a tried-and-true design for the sustainable future of refrigeration.  

The company’s sales manager, Adam Chapman, said the adoption of CO2 and other natural refrigerants is becoming more important in the HVACR industry.

"Our TOS-series centrifugal oil separators help to meet these needs by providing efficient performance and cost-effective installation and service...our hope is that the addition of centrifugal oil separators in the CO2 space will make way for further progress and product innovation in CO2 refrigeration,” he said.

Cleaver-Brooks showcased the CBEX-3W with proprietary EX technology. Engineers designed the CBEX-3W to optimise every component of the boiler, including the burner, the furnace, and the tubes.

The goal is to provide optimally balanced heat release zones and minimise thermal stresses in the boiler. What sets the CBEX-3W apart is its integral head burner and economiser.

The burner achieves 10:1 turndown with 3% O2 across the full operating range, leading to lower fuel consumption over the life of the boiler.

Extended heat transfer tubes, only found in EX systems, use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations to optimise the geometry of the tube and increase heat transfer by 85%. By optimising the heat transfer of the tubes and furnace, the CBEX-3W requires less heating surface to achieve the same capacity output, facilitating a more compact design.

“Integration of the core components is the key to CBEX systems,” according to Don Betts, product manager, Packaged Firetube for Cleaver-Brooks. “The CBEX-3W seamlessly combines the boiler, burner, heat recovery and controls, resulting in the most-efficient and lowest-emission firetube system ever built.”

The CBEX-3W is capable of firing natural gas, propane, and light oil, as well as alternate fuels such as hydrogen, biodiesel, and more.

Samsung Electronics introduced Hylex universal inverter-driven heat pumps (premium and standard series).

Hank Choi, corporate VP and head of air solution business team, Digital Appliances (DA) Business at Samsung Electronics, said Hylex has been designed to revolutionise HVAC through seamless installation and high efficiency.

Hylex systems can utilise existing refrigerant piping and provide different piping options for even greater installation flexibility during replacement applications. To further reduce installation costs, they can also use existing control wiring and are compatible with most 24VAC thermostats.

The Q-PAC Multimotor Plenum Fan (MPF) introduces a new technical architecture for fans in commercial air handlers.

At the heart of this innovation is Q-PAC's patented fan controller, combines multiple motorised impellers with a custom adaptive frame to operate as a single fan.

This design merges the simplicity of a traditional single-motor blower with the redundancy of fan arrays—eliminating the complexity, skilled labour requirements, and high maintenance costs associated with legacy commercial HVAC fans.

"What we've realised after iterating and innovating through almost every possible architecture is that a fan array was never really the product that building owners wanted or needed. What should have been invented all along was just a more resilient fan—which is a multimotor plenum fan," Matt Kent, Q-PAC's founder and CEO, explained.

Munters showcased the FA6 evaporative humidifier and cooler. This compact direct evaporative system can be installed new or integrated into most air-handling systems and CRAH units for superior indoor temperature and humidity control.

Using Munters GLASdek media in corrosion-resistant cassettes, it creates a comfortable indoor climate in commercial buildings, manufacturing facilities, data centres and other enclosed spaces. The standard product line encompasses a wide range of sizes, options for multistage control, and integrated droplet separators.

Danfoss presented Alsmart, a new generation programmable controller portfolio for the HVAC unit market and beyond, such as custom solutions integrating different technologies like HVAC and solar heating. It consists of the basic controller, extension modules, displays, programming tools and applications. Features include plug and play sensor to cloud integration. It meets the highest security standard in the global HVAC PLC market.
The platform has 5 ports for integration with field devices such as valves, sensors, energy meters and compressors, and allows for cloud and/or BMS systems integration over BACnet, MQTT, HTTPS SNMP, Modbus, following the newest IT Security standards IEC62443-4-2.

This integration capability allows buildings to have networks of multiple chiller or different HVAC units in a building like Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems (DOAS), chillers, heat pumps and water pump stations.