Scroll Compressor Technology Is Vital to Emerson’s Climate Control Business

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发表于 2002-12-15 13:33 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

Scroll Compressor Technology Is Vital to Emerson's Climate-Control Business

Oct. 29--Two deceptively simple pieces of iron are spurring Emerson's climate-technologies business.

Fitted together, they form the heart of the Copeland scroll compressor for air-conditioning and heat-pump systems, a key growth area for the maker of control systems, electronics and electrical products.

Emerson's scroll-compressor business has grown from zero to nearly $900 million in the last 15 years, selling to major air-conditioner manufacturers. And it hopes to see double-digit growth over the next four years.

While sizzling summers give a boost to compressor sales, Emerson's success is based on more than hot air.

"Copeland's breakthrough was finding the manufacturing technology that allowed it to produce (scroll compressors) at a reasonable cost," said Mark Menzer, vice president of engineering and research at the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute in Arlington, Va.

Emerson's success also is felt in the Ozarks, home to some of its plants. Scroll sets -- the two finely machined pieces of iron -- are made in Lebanon and Ava, Mo. A facility in Lebanon also assembles scroll compressors. Scroll-related jobs in the towns total about 1,400 people during peak production.

A compressor is the engine of any air-conditioning system. It compacts the refrigerant gas, creating a hot gas under high pressure. Moving through tubing, this high-pressure gas is cooled to a liquid and then evaporates to a low-pressure gas, which causes a sharp temperature drop. A heat pump works the same way, but it reverses its actions during the winter and uses the heat created from gas compression.

Traditional air conditioners use a reciprocating compressor, which relies on a piston to compress the gas. By contrast, the scroll compressor relies on interlocking spirals; they rotate, pushing the gas into a smaller area and compressing it.

The idea isn't new. French engineer L閛n Creux patented the idea in 1905. But building the scroll was another matter.

"You need high-precision machining to cut out the scrolls," said Eckhard Groll, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "It just wasn't cost-effective" at the time.

So, the idea lay dormant for 70 years, until technology caught up with theory.

Groll, who studies climate-control systems, described the scroll compressor as highly efficient.

"Reliability, durability and no valving" to control gas-flow are advantages over reciprocating compressors, he said. "It is also a lower-noise machine."

One reason for the greater reliability is fewer moving parts, which means a lower likelihood of parts failure, Groll said.

Getting going

Emerson is no stranger to climate-control. In fact, it built America's first electric fans 10 years before Willis H. Carrier invented the air conditioner in 1902.

As for history, "We can beat Carrier easily," Emerson's president, James G. Berges, said in jest.

But the company's presence had been limited to selling controls and motors for the fans, blowers and valves used inside air conditioners.

It got into the reciprocating-compressor business in 1986 when it acquired Copeland Corp. of Sydney, Ohio.

Copeland had been developing a scroll-compressor design. The decision to promote the scroll compressor, which Copeland launched in 1987, wasn't simple.

"The scroll compressor had a lot of promise, but it meant a huge amount of risk," said Thomas E. Bettcher, an Emerson executive vice president and business leader of Emerson Climate Technologies.

Copeland also was a latecomer. Japanese conglomerates had been using scroll compressors in products sold to the Asian market.

"Frankly, we were worried about the Japanese," Bettcher said. "Back in those days, if the Japanese decided to take a market, they would just take it."

Still, the company was confident that it could overcome the challenges, given its long history of developing and applying manufacturing technology, he said. Emerson decided in the early 1990s to invest heavily in the new technology and to take the lead quickly, Bettcher said.

The gamble paid off. Emerson estimates that it supplies about 80 percent of U.S. demand for scroll compressors used in residential and light-commercial air-conditioner and heat-pump systems.

During the last decade, it also boosted the scroll compressor's presence, which accounts for half of all compressors sold to that market, according the company.

As a result, Emerson has been able to hike its share of all types of compressors sold to that market to nearly 60 percent from 38 percent in the late 1980s.

Also, federal energy and environmental regulations are encouraging scroll-compressor sales. The minimum efficiency standard for air conditioners must increase by an additional 20 percent in 2006. "As efficiency standards go up, it's good for scroll because it is inherently more efficient," Bettcher said.

The scroll compressor also could be modified easily to use alternative refrigerant gases to replace ozone-damaging hydrochlorofluorocarbons by 2010, he said.

Moving to scroll compressors has allowed Carrier and others to offer consumers a more reliable product, Bettcher said. Lennox International Inc. recently decided that its commercial air conditioners would use Copeland scroll compressors exclusively.

John Whinery, director of commercial marketing at Lennox, said only the Copeland model could meet Lennox's high-reliability standard.

Emerson is hoping to replicate its U.S. success in Asia, where hot weather and growing per-capita income are creating a large market for air conditioning.

The company has built two plants, one in Thailand and another in China, to make scroll compressors for the Asian market.

"After we get Asia done, we can dream about India and Brazil, where the infrastructure and the per-capita income is so low (for now)," Bettcher said.

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(c) 2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. EMR,