When you first meet Ty Newell, a partner in Verde GSE with more than 35 years of experience in sustainable environmental engineering, his easy confidence in explaining even the most complicated systems is immediately evident. Newell spent 27 years as a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been Professor Emeritus at U of I for the past seven years.
Newell’s bona fides are clear, and that made him a perfect fit for Rick Hansen when he was looking for a partner.
Newell and Hansen, along with Newell’s son Ben and Alex Long, formed Verde (for the uno-lingual, “verde” is Spanish for “green”) in January 2014 under the principles of clean air and sustainable energy. The company designs and manufacturers military grade pre-conditioned air units using sustainably sourced materials and zero-waste manufacturing. Newell says the team saw a gap in the market when ITW-Hobart pulled out of the PCA market and Newell’s firm’s expertise in sustainable engineering fit with the developing “green business” trend.
“We view ourselves as a green company from the basis of providing fresh air to keep us healthy and comfortable in aircraft,” Newell says. “Our unit is to be the most efficient, and a technology leader in the PC Air business. We’ll strive for a zero waste manufacturing facility, in which everything has a place where it can go and hopefully be of value again.”
Going green is well and good, but can be for naught if you don’t have the experience in your industry. Thankfully for Verde, Hansen has been in GSE for 11 years and was most recently vice president and general manager at J&B Aviation, Hobart and ITW-Military. He was also an officer in the United States Air Force.
Yet, because Verde’s technology hasn’t been in the market for at least five years, Hansen says the barriers to entry remain high.
It's Not Easy Being Green
“We get blocked sometimes from bidding because we have not been supplying these systems for five years,” Hansen says. “I recently reviewed one specification that called out ten years. You wouldn’t buy a 5- or 10-year-old house air conditioning technology or, for that matter, a computer.”
The requirements create a chilling effect – pun fully intended – on PCA units. Airport and airline managers looking to replace equipment don’t know about new technology, Verde’s or otherwise, if they’re only looking at the old guard.
In Hansen’s experience, he says that maintenance contacts have been interested and impressed, but the decision makers haven’t been offered the same information. “The management of the airports and airlines need to understand that such language will ensure they never see innovative products,” Hansen says. “What they get is the same old technology. This is big in an industry that so needs updating.”
Not all doors are closed, however, and the message is beginning to get out. Verde has units working in some exceptionally harsh climates for air conditioning, including Orlando International Airport and Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. “Because of the experience that Rick has in the market and that people know him and he knows what’s needed, that’s opening doors,” Newell says. “Our units are starting to move into some good active airports.”
To set themselves apart, the Verde team have had to put themselves in front of the right people – those who understand the economic and environmental benefits of sustainable technology – who are “tucked away” according to Newell.
“The less waste you produce, there’s usually a cost-benefit on top of just being beneficial environmentally,” Newell says. The sustainability managers at airports and airlines are the ones who understand those benefits most and, as a result, are the ones Verde works hardest to reach.
Sustainable Design Goes Industrial
Newell Industries, the engineering firm run by the Newells and Long, has been working on keeping the air we breathe clean and healthy for decades while maintaining an environmental conscious and sustainability. Newell Industries first worked with Hansen to develop a high pressure PCA unit for the military when Hansen was at Hobart. Ty’s most public work to date, the Equinox House, is a house that is completely run on solar energy and is highly insulated to ensure comfortable and healthy air flow. The Equinox House is also Ty’s home. The air flow principles from the Equinox House provide the ground work for what differentiates Verde’s PCA units.
In both the sustainable living and aviation sides, Newell’s products monitor carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (food and body odors, cosmetics, cleaners and other chemicals) and maintain comfortable conditions.
Most airline passengers readily recognize uncomfortable conditions – being either too hot or too cold – but many attribute their “traveler’s cold” to the cramped quarters rather than the air they’re breathing.
“We’ve all flown somewhere and then come down with a cold a short time later,” Ty says. “If we more actively see how much air is needed on an aircraft and we supply that, we’re going to make ourselves healthier.
“There’s a real economic benefit to doing that, and that’s the type of technology that, in the near future, we expect to be implementing with our unit.”
And Verde GSE plans to lead those updates for PCA manufacturers. Verde’s PCAs are the only units on the market to offer real-time online diagnostics and over-the-air upgrading to automatically upgrade Verde units to newly developed algorithms and region-specific tuning.
“We can do that on particular units, we can do that on a whole wave of units throughout an airport or throughout a region, and it goes in in a seamless manner, so it’s not the usual annoying message that tells you your computer’s frozen as it does its update stuff,” Newell says. The end result are PCA units that are never out of date and are constantly running with the most advanced algorithms, tuned specifically for the location of the unit.
In 2016, Verde plans to release a 400Hz converter and a mobile, diesel-run PCA unit.
“I’m looking to change the thinking,” Hansen says. “Our goal is to disrupt the industry once again.”
