Air Conditioning

By Bob Gariano

Grainger is the headquartered in the big building on the south side of Route 60 just west of Riverwoods Road in Mettawa. The company’s business is to distribute a myriad of industrial and maintenance products throughout North America. The company has grown steadily and profitability, not by making products, but by being an essential part of the behind the scenes supply chain for commercial customers who need hardware, equipment, and other products to keep their businesses running.

Grainger is a publicly traded company that has revenues of approximately $7.4 billion annually with a market capitalization of almost $11 billion. The company’s shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GWW. William Grainger started the company in the 1930’s and the symbol is still representative of his initials.

Hot Weather Demand

Hot weather and severe summer storms are good for Grainger’s business. The company’s hundreds of thousands of products include a broad array of equipment and parts for the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning industry. These products include tools and service equipment, motors and engines, air conditioner and ventilator components, and complete HVAC units. The products range from small residential fans to large agricultural units to commercial air conditioning parts and equipment.

More dramatic summer weather conditions, like hurricanes, tornados, and flooding, might require Grainger to supply water and sewage pumps, back up generators, or even chain saws and safety equipment for clean up operations. Supported by over 600 local branches around the country and billions of dollars of stocked inventory, Grainger is always ready to support the crucial speed and convenience purchases needed in such extreme weather conditions.

Willis Carrier and Air Conditioners

It may seem hard to imagine surviving a summer like we are experiencing without it, but mechanical air conditioning was not invented until 1902. American engineer, Willis Carrier, developed the first modern mechanical air conditioner using compressed refrigerant. This started the entire air conditioning and refrigeration industry.

The Carrier business today is part of United Technologies Corporation and still carries that inventor’s name around the world. There is a theory that great achievements were confined to the temperate zones before the advent of air conditioning, simply because places closer to the equator were too hot for hard work. That theory can be dismissed by anyone who has seen the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Coliseum, or the Taj Mahal, all built within 45 degree latitude of the equator. Nevertheless, air conditioning has dramatically improved modern productivity and comfort.

Earlier, non-mechanical air cooling devices were designed, as people tried to achieve the luxury of a cool environment in hot climates. In 1881, Naval engineers constructed a large device containing rags saturated with melted ice water. The box like structure was used to make the dying President James Garfield more comfortable in his final days. A fan blew ambient air over the rags and lowered the temperature of the president’s room some 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Effective but not commercially viable, the device consumed over 125 tons of ice each month.

Air Conditioning Breakthroughs

In 1922, Carrier had two breakthroughs to his new invention, a technical one and a commercial one. First, he replaced the original toxic ammonia based refrigerants with dielene and then used a centralized compressor to lower the size of the unit. Second, the first commercial building, the Rivoli movie theater in New York City, installed a centralized air conditioner to attract customers in the hot summer months. It has been claimed that the great movie boom of the 1930’s and 1940’s was about people seeking cool air on sweltering summer afternoons as much as their pursuit of good cinema.

In 1928, the US Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court buildings were air conditioned. During World War II, window air conditioners were developed. Air conditioners soon started to be used in office buildings, retail stores, and on railroad cars. Certainly the growth of the American Sunbelt states was aided by the availability of less expensive and reliable air conditioning.

A Ton of Air Conditioning

In spite of the modern development of air conditioning equipment, one notable term continues from the early days of ice making. When water turns from liquid into ice, or vice versa, there is considerable heat energy involved. Physicists call this a phase transition. Such a transition requires latent heat energy and the latent heat of fusion for ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit is 144 BTU per pound. That means that each pound of water needs to get rid of 144 BTUs of heat energy to turn into ice even though it stays at the same temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit as it solidifies.

The early ice house operators used these figures to calculate that one ton (2000 pounds) of water needed to get rid of 288,000 BTUs to turn into ice. If the ice house wanted to make a ton of ice in 24 hours, the ice house operators needed to eliminate 12,000 BTUs per hour for each ton of water to turn that liquid into frozen ice. This is the same measure of how much heat a one ton air conditioner removes from the air, 12,000 BTUs per hour. Of course, how much electricity is required to produce one ton of cooling capacity depends on the efficiency of the machine, however, the unit of cooling capacity remains the same. Some modern technology retains a constant reminder of our early industrial roots.

 As the hot summer days continue into August, air conditioners around the country will continue to make our living conditions more comfortable and productive. Supported by distributors like Grainger, who provide the parts and equipment to keep these machines running, modern air conditioning technology has brought comfort and productivity to people throughout the world.

Bob Gariano is President of RGA, an executive search firm that recruits senior executives and board members for public and private companies. Bob can be reached at rgariano@robertgariano.com