#111 Blue Frontier

Air conditioning that runs on salt

Read time: 5 minutes

Hi, I’m Javi Gascón.

This is Climate Tech Distillery, a newsletter where I talk about one specific climate tech company every week.

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Today we'll distill a company that's reinventing air conditioning with a salt solution instead of refrigerants, cutting electricity use by up to 90%: Blue Frontier 🇺🇸

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What Problem Does Blue Frontier Tackle❓

They tackle the paradox of air conditioning: the hotter the planet gets, the more we use it, and the more we use it, the hotter the planet gets.

1. Explosive demand: There are around 2 billion AC units in the world today. The IEA expects 5.6 billion by 2050, roughly 10 new units every second. Air conditioning is already the fastest-growing use of electricity in buildings.

2. A 100-year-old technology: Almost every AC on Earth still runs on vapor compression, invented in the early 1900s. It cools air below its dew point to squeeze out moisture, then reheats it. Doing both jobs with one process is brutally inefficient, especially in humid climates.

3. It fails when you need it most: Conventional units lose capacity and efficiency on the hottest days, exactly when demand peaks. Utilities then fire up fossil-fuel plants to cover those spikes.

4. Refrigerants: The HFCs inside most units are greenhouse gases thousands of times more potent than CO₂, and they leak.

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Product / Service 📦

Blue Frontier makes rooftop air conditioning units for commercial buildings (offices, restaurants, schools) that replace refrigerant-based cooling with a concentrated salt solution, called a liquid desiccant, plus water.

How it works: The salt solution pulls moisture straight out of the incoming air. Once the air is dry, a second stage cools it using nothing but water evaporation, the same physics that makes you feel cold when you step out of the pool. No condenser, no compressor doing the cooling, no noise.

Built-in energy storage: A small heat pump re-concentrates the salt solution, and that concentrated liquid can be stored in tanks for up to 6 hours. The unit can "charge" at midday when solar power is cheap and abundant, then cool the building through the evening peak using almost no electricity.

Performance: Up to 90% less electricity than conventional AC and more than 90% reduction in peak demand. It's 3x more efficient than the proposed ASHRAE standard for moisture removal. And unlike traditional units, it gets more efficient as the outside temperature rises.

Climate-friendly: 85% lower refrigerant impact, since only a tiny amount of low-GWP refrigerant drives the heat pump. It works from Miami humidity to Phoenix desert heat, and it produces distilled water as a byproduct.

Their units

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Market 🌐

The global HVAC market is worth around $300 billion a year. Blue Frontier targets the commercial rooftop unit segment (5-20 ton units on offices, retail and restaurants), where humidity control and peak demand charges make the economics most attractive.

Demand is driven by heat waves, the phase-down of HFC refrigerants, and utilities desperate to flatten peak loads as data centers and electrification push grids to their limits.

Other Key Players

Transaera 🇺🇸: MIT spin-off using metal-organic framework materials to dehumidify air, backed by Carrier.

AirJoule 🇺🇸: Uses solid desiccants and vacuum technology for dehumidification and water harvesting, in partnership with Carrier and GE Vernova.

Blue Frontier is the only one shipping a complete commercial AC unit that combines liquid desiccant dehumidification, evaporative cooling and energy storage in a single package.

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Founding Story 🦄

Matt (left) & Daniel (right)

Blue Frontier was founded in 2017 in Florida by Daniel Betts and Matt Tilghman. The origin is unusual: the technology traces back to a 2009 US Department of Energy project to kill airborne anthrax spores in building ventilation.

Liquid desiccants turned out to be excellent bactericides, and along the way the team discovered they were also a far better way to dehumidify air.

Daniel, a PhD in thermal sciences who had already run a battery company and a previous liquid desiccant AC startup, teamed up with Matt, a Stanford PhD in thermodynamics, to co-develop the system with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

In 2022 they raised a $20M Series A led by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures (they have raised $47.8 million in total). Since then the tech was named 2026 Product of the Year at AHR Expo, the biggest HVAC show in the US, and units are running in universities, offices and even a Waffle House in Georgia.

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Top Impact Stats 📈

1. Up to 90% less electricity for air conditioning compared to conventional units.

2. More than 90% reduction in peak power demand, thanks to up to 6 hours of built-in energy storage.

3. 85% lower refrigerant global warming impact, with distilled water as the only byproduct.

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