We are caught in a vicious cycle with existing HVAC technologies – as global temperatures rise, demand for air conditioning has increased.
But air conditioning itself consumes 10% of global electricity and accounts for 4% of emissions, thus causing more global warming that in turn drives the need for more cooling.
The runaway effect here can be enormous, especially when you consider that most homes in hot and humid developing countries have not yet purchased their first A/C. As wealth increases in these places, air conditioning’s footprint is expected to triple by 2050 (IEA).
For more than a century, cooling innovations have been largely aimed at more efficient temperature reduction (e.g., fans, heat pumps).
Plus in many hot and humid climates, dehumidifying the air can be a more efficient way of lowering the heat index, effectively achieving human comfort and safety at higher temperatures.
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The traditional way to do dehumidification is to cool to the dew point and condense water from the air. However, this produces air that is much colder than the desired temperature, so the air must be reheated to meet temperature requirements. This self-defeating cycle is obviously very inefficient from an energy perspective.
Mojave uses a high salt solution to passively pull water from hot, humid air. The cool, dry air is then delivered to the building and, notably, the water-saturated liquid desiccant is regenerated (i.e., water pulled out and returned to its useful high salinity state) using only waste heat from the system.
This process achieves double the moisture removal efficiency versus the traditional vapor compression approach, and regenerating the desiccant purely through waste heat dramatically reduces the complexity and capital cost of the system.
Mojave is also developing a product that can upend the broader $100B+ cooling market by integrating evaporative cooling, dehumidification, and heat transfer into a single streamlined unit.
In evaporative cooling one uses the latent heat of water to achieve sensible cooling. This means as water absorbs heat from the air and evaporates, the air cools down. This produces a stream of cool, humid air.
This type of cooling is thousands of years old and incredibly energy efficient, but does not suit modern contexts because of the lack of humidity control. Mojave solves this critical constraint by using its low-energy liquid desiccant dehumidification to control the incoming air conditions, thereby guaranteeing system reliability.
Because Mojave regenerates the desiccant through waste heat (eliminating the need for additional series of heat exchangers and further cooling) and does not require any complex to manufacture parts, the company can reach cost parity with incumbent systems at the <1000 units/year scale.
And since Mojave can currently remove twice as much moisture per kilowatt hour, the system is already 50% more energy efficient than competitors.
Additionally, Mojave can dramatically improve indoor air quality due to the biocidal properties of its liquid desiccant. And regenerating the desiccant electrochemically enables a form of demand response by which the regeneration cycle can operate independently of the duty cycle, shifting electrical load to times of day when the grid is filled with greener and cheaper electrons.
This ability to reduce strain on the grid is especially valuable given that the tripling of air conditioning demand by 2050 will require new electricity capacity equivalent to the combined electricity capacity of the United States, the EU and Japan today (IEA).
Mojave was spun out of Xerox PARC and is one of PARC’s biggest projects. The company currently has 20+ employees, and is led by a world class technical team with experience commercializing liquid desiccant HVAC solutions.
We’re excited to lead Mojave’s Seed round alongside Fifth Wall, the largest venture capital firm dedicated to the global real estate industry and technology for the built environment, with participation from Xerox Ventures and Starshot Capital. Mojave is spending 2023 running several field pilots, with commercial launch slated for 2024.
