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Sponge balls that clean air-conditioning tubes lead to international business
Coralville company was founded by a Jones County ‘farm kid’
Feb. 25, 2024 5:00 am
CORALVILLE — Innovas Technologies recently announced two international deals to supply its automatic air-conditioning tube cleaning system to major energy facilities in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Chuck Dirks, 59, president of Innovas Technologies, told The Gazette both projects started in 2016 after meetings with leaders in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to explore potential markets in energy, oil and gas sectors.
Innovas, based in Coralville, designs and sells its Helios Tube Cleaning System, which uses small balls to gently clean the insides of tubes used in cooling systems, improving efficiency and reducing carbon footprints.
The systems are assembled at Modern Piping in Cedar Rapids.
No other systems like it operate in the Middle East, Dirks said. Cracking into the Middle East market took time to negotiate and go through the bidding process because they had to build trust and friendships along the way, he said.
The deal announced in January is with Marafeq, which is expanding the Lusail Marina, a major district energy facility in Doha, Qatar. Marafeq is a leading developer of district cooling in the Middle East, where it supplies air conditioning for the vast expansion of commercial buildings in the Persian Gulf region.
Innovas said the use of the Helios system will cut energy consumption in Qatar by 10 million kilowatt-hours annually and reduce its CO2 emissions by 60,000 tons over the next 15 years — equivalent to planting 90,000 trees every year.
The Qatari economy has become home to many of the world’s most advanced sustainability designs, Dirks said, and it has taken “the initiative to embrace Innovas' quality and innovation and recognize the value it brings to them.”
“This is a tremendous opportunity to introduce our current and emerging technologies to Qatar and the rest of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council).”
Dirks said the deal with the United Arab Emirates, signed Feb. 16, is with Tabreed National Central Cooling Co. and still is evolving. Tabreed has 90 plants that supply cooling to places like the Dubai Mall, Dubai Opera, the World Trade Center in Abu Dhabi, and many other commercial businesses, according to its website.
Innovas contracted with two dealers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to assist with its project proposals in the Middle East, Dirks said.
How system works
The Helios system eliminates the “fouling” of air-conditioning tubes, thereby optimizing the operations of chilled water plants.
The Helios system injects cleaning balls — small sponges — in the entry point of heat exchanger tubes and collects them in a trap at the heat exchanger’s exit.
The balls are pushed through the tubs are programmed intervals and continuously, gently clean the insides of the tubes, eliminating bio scale and preventing deposits from accumulating. The “fouling” of heat exchangers by biofilm and mineral despots is a problem in industry, causing corrosion and valve and pump failures.
The Helios installations have completed millions of cleaning cycles over the last decade, with operational reliability over 99 percent and “zero cooling process interruption,” according to the Innovas website.
Helios systems also eliminate the maintenance required for manual tube cleaning, which results in reduced operating costs, and lifetime CO2 emissions can be reduced by 6,000 to 10,000 tons.
All of Innovas’ products are designed and fabricated in Iowa, Dirks said.
Modern Piping, also known as Modern, has become “integral to our success,” he said.
Company’s history
Dirks, who grew up in Jones County — “as a farm kid” — formed Innovas in 2014 with Mike Crocker, a chemical engineer from Clemson, S.C., at the University of Iowa Research Park.
Both had worked for five years for a company that represented varied water treatment and condenser efficiency products.
They designed and tested the Helios system at the UI Hydraulics Lab in Iowa City.
“The results from the hydraulics lab work led to trade secrets for Innovas and foundations for additional patents intended for our product technology road map,” Dirks said.
Dirks is the company’s president, and Crocker is Innovas’ vice president of engineering.
Dirks said the overall concept of ball cleaning in heat exchangers was invented in the 1950s in Germany to improve the performance of large power plant condensers located on rivers.
Other small companies in Asia make similar systems, but Dirks said he learned there was a need to build smaller, more scalable systems that improved the “quality, effectivity and supported provisions that Western companies require.”
The company piloted its tube-cleaning system at universities, eventually 19 of them, including Duke University, the University of Virginia and George Mason University.
The University of Virginia was honored with the 2021 IDEA-International District Energy Association’s innovation award for installing Innovas’ Helios system in 20 campus water-cooled chillers.
The Virginia experience led to other institutions installing Helios on their campuses, saving more than 33 million kilowatt-hours and $3 million annually while reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by over 27,000 tons, Innovas reported.
The company also installed its tube-cleaning technology on condensers at Dominion Power, which has more than 5 million utility and retail customers in 14 states, and at the Empire State Building in New York City.
After Helios was installed in the Empire State Building in 2019, the first three “cooling seasons” showed energy consumption was cut by 1.2 million kilowatt-hours annually, according to an Innovas case study in 2022. The report concluded the system will reduce the building’s CO2 emissions by 13,500 tons over the next 15 years — equivalent to removing 2,400 fossil-fueled cars from the road.
Innovas also manufactures energy efficiency systems for the hospital, industrial and refining sectors.
Path to Innovas
Dirks started his work life as a pilot and then moved into marketing and sales, but always wanted to start his own company — “answering the call of the wild,” as he puts it.
After graduating from the University of North Dakota, Dirks joined the U.S. Army in 1987 and was a helicopter pilot who served in Desert Storm — his first exposure to the Middle East.
After leaving the military in 1995, he worked for Cessna Aircraft as a regional sales manager for turbine aircraft and as an operations manager for the Citation Demonstration Department, where he flew a lot internationally.
In 2006, he moved to Rockwell Collins, now known as Collins Aerospace, as a principal marketing manager.
Each career step, Dirks said, helped him when he was starting and growing his own business. Cessna taught him the nature of successful entrepreneurs, and Collins taught him about technology development, strategy and project management.
What’s next?
Innovas, Dirks said, found a market niche and now is building additional products to solve other “peripheral problems” associated with shell and tube heat exchangers, such as:
- Triton High Efficiency Y-Strainers, which prevent large debris from entering the heat exchangers.
- Sentinel Prognostics, a data collection system that collects and evaluates data from fixed sensors that monitor the heat exchanger system. It’s being beta tested at the University of Virginia and will be for sale this year.
- Sentinel Diagnostics, an Innovas’ patented micro, mobile and submersible sensor designed to continuously cycle through a cooling system to detect any cracks or wear to the heat exchanger during operation. The diagnostic tool, Dirks said, will be the “first of its kind in the world” and has received National Science Foundation funding.
Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com
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