Ahmedabad, 29th January 2020:- Delivering the keynote address at the 13th Confluence International Conference on Indoor Air Quality, Deepak Pahwa, Chairman Pahwa Group, shared with the attendees that the increased challenges maintaining IAQ ( Indoor Air Quality) in conditioned spaces with the increased outdoor air pollution. He expressed that today modern climate controlled interiors-offices, homes, malls, hospitals as well as bus stations, airports-was a given , where people spend more than 80 percent of their time.

In his keynote, Mr Pahwa traced the journey introduction of IAQ as a concept in India from the time the concept was introduced to the Indian HVAR&R industry by DRI, a Pahwa group company way back in 1991.

Enclosed conditioned spaces such as office complexes, malls, hotels, restaurants, auditoriums, heaters and various other buildings are dealing with not only contaminants/pollutants generated indors but also has to ensure outdoor pollution like like PM 2.5, PM10, VOCs as well other gaseous contaminants is not brought inside conditioned spaces through conditioning systems.

‘Now, more than ever, the need to monitor and improve indoor air quality is crucial,’ Pahwa said. ‘It’s also become easier given the focus on reducing outdoor air pollution as well as the emergence of cutting edge technologies to manage air quality indoors’.

According to Mr Pahwa, the growing awareness of air pollution and its deleterious impact on human health also focused attention on the need for monitoring and handling indoor air quality. With outdoor air as input, indoor air handling systems design needed to do more than merely cooling to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Often known by its acronym, HVAC is goes beyond providing thermal comfort to ensuring acceptable indoor air quality.

Elaborating on the latest technology in HVAC systems, Pahwa said they use desiccant technology that uses hygroscopic substances that suck moisture from the air and cool indoor spaces. One of the major benefits of the technology is the reduction in tonnage required for a given space with associated reduction in the use of energy and utility costs.

As such, it fits the bill as ‘a sustainable green technology that incorporates a concern of climate change, a crucial new awareness that seeks to limit the emission of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that are responsible for the phenomenon known as global warming,’ he added.

He lauded ‘the welcome tendency’ to deploy renewable energy solutions to the problem of poor indoor air quality. ‘Renewables’ provide a way to manage the costs of increasingly expensive and finite sources of fossil fuels. With growing awareness of the long term conundrums in the indiscriminate use of fossil fuels, urban planners have begun to look at options such as solar energy, natural building materials, and ecologically effective heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

Referring to Pahwa Group’s experience with the deployment of HVAC systems globally, Mr Pahwa spoke of the company’s experience with the Beijing Olympics, where its flagship company, Dessicant Rotors International, installed air quality control systems at various sites including the Beijing Airport.

‘Working to very clear and stringent specifications, our indoor air handling systems helped save about 80 percent of the energy that is lost with outgoing air and facilitated an increase in the quantity of fresh air,’ Pahwa elaborated.

Mr Pahwa was honored at the conference for his pioneering work and tremendous contribution to the Indian HVAC and R Industry.

About Pahwa Group:

‘With Desiccant at its core, in relation to air’, the Pahwa Group is a group of knowledge based and technology driven companies offering advanced environmental control solutions to a wide array of companies. The Group is headed by Mr. Deepak Pahwa as the Group Chairman and employs a strong team of over 1400+ persons in 6 continents and has 10 manufacturing units. The core strength of all the group companies is concentrated in desiccant and desiccant-based technologies. Operating within a broad framework of ‘environment and energy’, the group companies are involved in manufacturing products like dehumidifiers, resin dryers, product dryers, gas phase filtration systems, energy recovery and fresh air treatment systems. Desiccant Rotors International (DRI) is a global provider of components, products and systems for Energy Recovery, Indoor Air Quality, Fresh Air Treatment, and Green Buildings. Desiccant Rotors International, Inc. (DRI Inc.) markets and sells energy recovery wheels and desiccant dehumidification rotors and cassettes in North America. The current installation base of DRI wheels in North America runs in the thousands. Our parent company, DRI, is the largest global provider of enthalpy wheels for air-to-air energy recovery. The DRI worldwide group has a global sales network extending to Brazil, China, Malaysia, Europe, South Africa, Philippines, Australia, Korea and India. DRI has a fully integrated ISO certified manufacturing facility with in-house coating, synthesizing, winding, metal working and surface finishing and world class test facilities for performance evaluation of enthalpy wheels and desiccant dehumidification wheels.

Will be a challenging month for every industry from a cash flow point of view

Can you walk us through your company's profile?

Pahwa Group is comprised of four companies that are the pillars, Bry-Air, DRI, TDS, Delair and Bry-Air Prokon. These companies mainly deal with the industrial air treatment solutions and commercial building air conditioning products. Our products are predominantly manufactured in India, but we do have a great presence in the international market also. We offer industrial product solutions targeting humidity control for the pharmaceutical and food industries, but the applications are not restricted to these industries. We also offer applications like electronics leather, packaging, cold stores among the other range of applications complying with the dehumidification capabilities or reducing the humidity. We also provide gas filtration system for gases like SO2, SO3, NoX, that can create corrosion related issues in data centers and control rooms where we do air cleaning.

We also have a division where we do plastic auxiliary equipment; which is to dry the plastic pellets which are used for extrusion, blow molding. Also, we have a company which does compressed air drying systems, called Delair. On the commercial side, at DRI where we provide indoor air quality solutions for commercial buildings like hotels, hospitals, malls, airports, office premises with entire focus on providing healthy environment for the occupants. We also do shop floor of factory cooling systems. In India, industries emphasis more on providing work floor comfort at the shop floor level and this consciousness is trending across the industry, and we provide the same in an economical way.

We have a strong hold in India with active presence in seven cities. However, almost half of our businesses are based outside India and we are proud of the fact that we are India exporters for the world right from South Korea to South America. We aim to be best in the world, especially in terms of product quality, performance, and innovation; so, we invest more in R&D. We have eight state-of-the-art test labs in Gurgaon, and in our field that we are really investing a lot in innovative materials, concepts testing laboratories to test and verify the product innovation.

What are the products you showcased at ACREX 2020?

ACREX 2020 was mainly focused on air conditioning. The Indian Air Conditioning market is growing, particularly more on the residential side. However, we see a traction in the commercial segment also especially in office buildings, commercial complexes, institutional buildings, hospitals, airports, malls; where requirement of centralized HVAC system is high. Heating, Ventilation, Air-conditioning systems is drastically increasing in India, because of which we witness a downfall in certain products in this segment, but overall, the India remains intact.

We launched new products at ACREX, complying with industrial demands. We are trying to invent innovative products for evaporative cooling systems, especially indirect evaporative cooling systems in which we can use power of water and evaporation. We have special dedicated outdoor air systems that are highly energy efficient for commercial buildings. We are also doing a lot, for school children’s health, offices, residences, we also have central air purification systems that goes a long way in maintaining the IAQ. We also have a lot of focus on energy recovery and energy efficient systems, green buildings, especially certified buildings, humidity control systems or the air that focuses on energy, reducing energy consumption. We also do absorption chiller, which is something new in Indian and in the Asian market as it uses waste heat to produce chilled water which goes a long way to make any process plant or a building highly energy efficient.

How are smart technologies equipping the HVAC&R market?

All our traditional and mechanical equipment are becoming smarter with controls sensors, electrical panels on board; moreover, they can communicate with a building management system. You can increase the efficiency of your products by using these controls and sensors; it also helps you in conducting predictive maintenance in the HVAC unit and you can avoid any downtime of shutdowns.

How can HVAC systems contribute in reducing environmental impacts?

There was a general perception that air-conditioning is expensive to install and operate. However, evaporative air-cooling systems, especially for shop-floor cooling and providing comfort conditions to production workers can now be availed in India at economical cost. So large scale economic cooling on factory shop floors could be less than 1/10th the cost of installation and running of a traditional air conditioning system.

There are initial signs of recovery in the Indian market. However, its key is optimism. However, we expect an uptake in the last quarter of 2020. With the credit availability and increase in the utilisation capacity we look forward for a positive outlook in the coming years.

The challenges of tackling the lesser known problem of indoor pollution

About Pahwa Group: