ASHRAE honors desiccant dehumidification pioneer

AMESBURY, MA — The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) named Carl Georg Munters an ASHRAE Pioneer of the Industry, according to a press release.

A posthumous award honoring individuals who made substantial contributions to the improvement and advancement of the industries the organization serves as well as showed evidence of technical or academic distinction.

Munters, who was born in Sweden in 1897, was founder of the Munters air treatment solution company. He invented numerous equipment (with more than 1,000 patents) for the industry, which had major impacts on progress. Most notably, in the 1960s he pioneered the basic principle of desiccant dehumidification drying, still considered one of the most efficient means of drying.

Other notable inventions include Styrofoam® (with John Tandberg for Dow Chemical), which was originally intended for use in HVAC insulation but is still widely used today; the Platen-Munters refrigerator, which is still used in trailers, campers, boats and other gas-powered places; and heat- and mass- transfer surfaces for use in heat exchangers, cooling towers, dehumidifiers, humidifiers and heat recovery units, which became heat recover wheels, evaporative air cooling and humidification media.

Munters, who died in 1989, left behind an aspirational HVACR legacy in addition to a thriving company, which operates in 30 countries on six continents, with 3,000 employees.