Laura Timberlake
Unicla International has won the best product in an engineering class at the Australian Good Design Awards.
The only independent automotive compressor manufacturer in the world, the company will also celebrate its 60th anniversary in October.
Unicla received the award for its eDrive electric compressor, which the company believes will change the working lives of the midnight technicians who are typically called out in the middle of the night to fix an air conditioning or refrigeration problem.
The Unicla family of electric drive compressors is among the first of a new breed of compressor that monitors itself and allows direct communication between technician and machine.
“When we began the electrification of our compressors, we dubbed it our ‘Midnight Technician Project’,” says Mark Mitchell, Chairman of the Queensland-based SuperCool Group, and director of Unicla International.
“The name was introduced in my anniversary book Unicla and the Midnight Technician, where we revealed the challenges and needs that technicians faced when typically called out in the middle of the night to get a system working again,” he says.
“Critical examples are multi-million dollar mining assets that cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour when not working, or a fully loaded freight train with a valuable grain cargo. A locomotive cabin is an extremely hot place for drivers, so operational air conditioning is essential to keep trains running. All of our design decisions are driven by the needs of the midnight technician.”
The data monitored by the compressor is relayed online back to the Unicla eConnect portal – or if not online, its log files stored onboard can be interrogated by a USB connection. With the online capability, it means that a technician can diagnose an issue before leaving the workshop. The ability to communicate with the machine improves efficiency and safety, lowers emissions and results in a longer life for the compressor.
“We made a commitment to technicians that our compressor would never actually fail,” says Mitchell.
“With our new technology, the compressor manages itself within a pre-determined set of safety parameters implemented to suit the air conditioning or refrigeration system.”
It is now possible for a compressor to be interrogated remotely to reveal its vital statistics, leading to a faster and more efficient solution to an operational issue. By monitoring pressures, temperatures and superheat, the eDrive can pinpoint failures in the whole system.
The Good Design Awards, established in 1958, is Australia’s most prestigious international accolade for design and innovation. Managing director of Good Design Australia, Rachel Wye, says the awards reflect the profound ripple effects that exceptional design can have on people, place and planet.
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