Aeroseal’s duct sealing technology was chosen as the winner of the 2016 AHR Expo Innovation Awards “product of the year.” The award was presented at the AHR Expo in Orlando, Jan. 25-27.

The awards were jointly presented by Doug Young, chairman of the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), David Underwood, president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), and Clay Stevens, president of the International Exposition Company (IEC) to winners from across 10 product categories.

“We are pleased to honor Aeroseal with this award, recognizing that it offers a groundbreaking solution to an industry-wide problem,” said Stevens. “For decades, ventilation issues have gone untreated, simply because there was no viable solution to sealing otherwise hard-to-access leaks. Aeroseal’s technology has taken this complex issue and made it into a relatively simple task.

“At large, we offer our congratulations to all of this year’s AHR Expo Innovation Award winners, who undoubtedly made the judges’ jobs difficult with an incredible display of inventiveness and solution-driven products,” Stevens continued.

With this new technology, Aeroseal has provided an alternative to traditional manual duct sealing products. The aerosol-based solution works from the inside of ventilation shafts to “seek” and bond-seal targeted leaks, rather than coating the entire inside of the shaft with sealant.

The technology, developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, EPA, and others, works from inside the shaft to find and seal leaks. Aeroseal’s solution eliminates the need to disrupt or destroy current construction. This duct sealing technology has been employed to fix critical ventilation issues in numerous buildings and facilities, including hospitals and multi-story apartment buildings.

“Almost every home in the United States has residential duct leakage that keeps as much as 30% of air in a given home out of occupied spaces,” said Neal Walsh, senior vice president of strategy and commercial sales at Aeroseal. “This results in a huge loss of energy, but until now solving the problem has typically required major disruption to home interiors. Our technology allows a contractor to seal up duct work that’s already been installed, improving both comfort and energy savings.

“We are excited and proud to have received this award, and consider it a big step forward for our industry,” Walsh continued. “We’ve been overwhelmed with the amount of positive response and are now more motivated than ever to create solutions to ventilation problems. After years of attending AHR Expo, we’ve become great believers in the show and its value as a connecting point and as a platform to raise awareness.”

In total, the complete list of 2016 AHR Expo Innovation Award winners includes:

Building Automation: Accutrol AVC Fume Hood Control System from Accutrol, LLC

Cooling: ZoomLine™ Flexible Tubing from Sporlan – Parker Hannifin

Green Building: Piranha Wastewater Heat Recovery Heat Pump from International Wastewater Systems Inc.

Heating: Victaulic Grooved System for Saturated Steam Piping from Victaulic

Indoor Air Quality: ASCENDANT™ conventional cooling, active desiccant hybrid system from SEMCO LLC

Plumbing: NEUTON controlled chilled beam pump module from SEMCO LLC

Refrigeration: HEOS Sistema – high efficiency waterloop system for commercial refrigeration from CAREL INDUSTRIES S.p.A.

Software: PlasmaSoft 2.0 IAQ Procedure Software from Plasma Air International

Tools & Instruments: ZoomLock™ Braze-Free Fittings from Sporlan – Parker Hannifin

Ventilation: Aeroseal duct sealing technology from Aeroseal

The judging panel recognized an additional 33 products and technologies with honorable mentions.