Keith Dunnavant
Keith Dunnavant lives at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Lexington, Virginia, USA. His journey with Munters began when he moved there with his family in the early nineties to work for Des Champs Labs, which was later acquired by the company.
Divide and conquer
“I’m a mechanical engineer and had experience doing dynamic system modelling, industrial process engineering, and HVAC controls, but this was my first sales position.”
Keith became one of four regional sales managers at Des Champs. This was around the same time new building codes for schools required a threefold increase in the amount of outdoor air in classrooms. However, high humidity levels, particularly in the southern climates of the United States, led to problems. HVAC systems provided room temperature control, but did not control humidity. As a result, mold and mildew grew, worsening the indoor air quality. Some students and teachers got sick.
“We had the solution for the problem, called ‘Divide and Conquer’. By dividing the cooling and humidity control processes, the problem was solved. It also saved up to 50 percent or more of the energy costs.”
In addition to air ventilation systems, Keith and his colleagues also provided heat recovery and humidity control for indoor pools, water parks, and ice rinks. They even had a unique product for racing car engines.
When Des Champs Technologies was acquired by Munters in 2007, Keith and his colleagues had expanded the business to include indirect evaporative cooling systems for commercial spaces in the dry western USA.
A cool journey begins
At Munters, Keith started working with data centers in 1999. However, the data center cooling sales initiative was largely shelved after the dot.com crash in 2000. By 2008, new thermal guidelines created an opportunity to revive the business.
“There was considerable activity building data centers and customers were looking for ways to save energy,” Keith recalls. “Direct evaporative and indirect evaporative systems both offered considerable energy savings compared to conventional approaches at the time.”
Keith and his colleagues introduced a concept called OASIS, where recirculating warm air from data centers is cooled with an indirect evaporative cooling process. The OASIS approach offers both annual electrical power savings and peak power savings. As a result, many customers showed interest and Munters had considerable sales success.
With droughts in California drawing more attention to water conservation, the market slowly began to pivot towards data center cooling approaches that used less or no water at all. In response to market demand, Munters developed SyCool, a thermosiphon driven heat rejection system that requires no water use.
Teamwork makes the dream work
The data center business received considerable attention within Munters because of the large orders. However, it was very unpredictable as customers started then stopped projects frequently. Today, Munters has a broad product portfolio - now including coolant distribution units (CDUs), chilled water CRAH’s, and state-of-the art chillers resulting from the recent Geoclima acquisition, which has made the order intake more consistent.
Reflecting on his career at Munters, Keith says: “I’ve had the pleasure of working with and learning from a lot of smart people throughout my career at Munters, and that has made my job very enjoyable. I still love to solve problems and collaborate with customers, R&D, and applications engineering to come up with solutions. When we pay close attention to understanding customer needs, and we work collaboratively to find good answers to meeting those needs, good things usually happen. It’s really all about teamwork.”
