WATER-OPERATED CEILING PANEL

The world’s first ceiling panel that replaces air conditioning units

Conventional ceiling panels, usually made of metal, are used to heat and cool buildings. They are particularly popular for retrofitting or individually changing room layouts – partly due to the short installation time on site.

Despite these advantages, conventional ceiling panels have one disadvantage: they cannot dehumidify the air in the room when cooling.

Conventional ceiling sails offer only two solutions for this:

1. A ventilation system with integrated supply air pre-drying, which, however, drives up investment costs and significantly impairs individuality with regard to changing room layouts.
2. No ventilation system. However, this means that rooms can only be cooled to 26 °C on around 40% of summer days, as the relative humidity in the room would otherwise rise above 70%.

With its natural climate ceiling sails, ArgillaTherm now offers a solution that dehumidifies the room air and cools it to the same level as air conditioning.

The only difference is that air conditioning systems dehumidify via the cooling coil, where the condensation is removed. While this technology guarantees uninterrupted cooling operation, it also causes an enormous additional energy consumption of approx. 40% (calculated on the basis of the actual cooling costs).

The natural climate ceiling panels dehumidify naturally via the polar clay minerals in the base material, whereby moisture is temporarily stored in the minerals and released back into the room air as required. The incredibly large surface area of the polar clay minerals, approx. 16 km² per m² of sail area, protects the material itself from becoming overly moist. This technology is unique and does not incur any energy costs.

The moisture storage capacity per square metre is over 2 litres. In the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, this is completely sufficient to guarantee uninterrupted cooling without ventilation technology.

Another decisive factor is speed: polar clay minerals are effective in this respect too, as they react as soon as the relative humidity rises above 50% and extract the excess moisture from the ambient air. This prevents moisture from rising towards the cold surface, thereby avoiding moisture deposits in advance.

The ceiling sails are delivered completely prefabricated on rollable A-frames. The scope of delivery also includes the necessary mounting materials. If required, a special scissor lift is provided for hanging the sails, enabling quick and easy installation. Connection to the pipe system is carried out in the same way as for conventional ceiling panels – with quick couplings or ½“ internal or external threads, as required.