PHASE Change Products Pty Ltd researches, develops and markets phase-change materials used to reduce energy outputs in a wide-range of appliances and industries.
PHASE Change Products Pty Ltd researches, develops and markets phase-change materials used to reduce energy outputs in a wide-range of appliances and industries.
Phase change materials (PCMs) is a non-scientific expression that refers to any substance with a high fusion heat which, melting and solidifying at a certain temperature, is capable of storing and releasing large amounts of energy.
The energy at the point of either melting or freezing is stored and used for a wide-range of appliances, or for processes such as cooling for commercial businesses, and in the cold chain industry (foodstuff deliveries in refrigerated trucks).
For air-conditioners, Osborne Park-based Phase Change uses panels to store energy for cooling during the hottest part of the day, using 90 per cent less energy during peak periods and about half the energy used by conventional air-conditioners over a year.
Phase Change has commercially manufactured PCM products in Perth for distribution to customers (mainly telecommunication shelters) all over the world since it bought the business assets of former public company TEAP, which went into liquidation in August 2005.
While managing director Keith Coakley and production manager Gavin Colbourne say PCMs are simple, the business has struggled to determine which industries to market its technology to.
“The biggest challenge has always been that PCM is not new technology, but maybe because it’s so simple people have ignored it for some reason,” Mr Coakley said.
“People seem to want to go for something more complex; it’s very simple, it just stores and releases energy.
“But I think the application as to where it goes has been our challenge.
“What industries do we go to? Do we go do air-conditioners? Do we do process cooling? Do we do commercial building? Electronics?”
After dabbling in everything from the medical sector (transferring blood) to the telecommunications industry, Phase Change has narrowed its focus to air-conditioners for commercial buildings and cooling processes, such as chillers for cool-rooms for supermarkets and vegetable growers.
By concentrating on a large-scale commercial process cooling installation, the company now has data regarding achievable energy reduction and promotes that to new customers.
Mr Coakley said the simplicity of commercial building and plants meant Phase Change could easily scale up its PCM to any size.
That in turn allows the company to trial prototypes.
“If we kept spreading our wings I don’t think we’d have much success,” he said.
Mr Colbourne said a further hindrance was cheap imitations of PCMs flooding markets Phase Change was trying to penetrate, which had all but destroyed credibility of the technology in India.
“The Indian market became quite lucrative, then everyone in India thought they could start making (PCMs) and so then a lot of bad products made it on the market and they started failing and they gave good products a bad name,” he said.
“It really did a lot of damage. Everyone thought they were scientists, all of a sudden.
“Too much stuff started to flood the market and they didn’t work; then to try and influence people who have already been burned is a tricky thing.”
To build credibility globally and in Australia, Phase Change has invested heavily in manufacturing its PCMs in Western Australia, while testing it in as many markets as possible globally.
Mr Coakley said when the market in India was filled with poor-performing cheap imitations, Phase Change looked elsewhere and entered into a partnership with electric power company XJ Power Co in China.
Although language and the Chinese regulatory process have been challenging, Mr Coakley said generating test cases and documenting success rates for Phase Change’s PCMs was integral to the company’s success.
“Being a small company, the problem is we probably haven’t had enough people on the ground and enough success stories to be able to market it correctly,” he said.
Mr Colbourne said testing the product was essential to gain credibility commercially, but the process in China was frustratingly slow.
“With China each county, shire or province has its own testing regime, so even though it’s been proven to work in other shires or states, it still needs testing in another one for another year,” he said.
“The market is slowly growing but there is a lag while we wait for the approvals to occur, so there’s no uniform approach.
“It’s slowly been building over the last year or so because it’s finally getting to the end of its testing period, so hopefully from now on we’ll start seeing a lot more sales because it’s past its regime testing and longevity tests.”
Despite the slow-moving approvals process, China now accounts for 80 per cent of the company’s sales.
Phase Change is also obtaining important commercial data of how much energy is saved by Phase Change’s customers.
