15th Consecutive Year at North American HVAC Show ‘AHR 2024’
Showcasing Flagship Product ‘Condensing Hydro Furnace (NPF)’
Kyungdong Navien took part in ‘AHR EXPO 2024,’ the largest HVAC exhibition in North America.
AHR EXPO 2024 was held in Chicago from January 22 to 24, local U.S. time. As North America’s largest HVAC exhibition, drawing some 2,000 HVAC companies each year, this marked Kyungdong Navien’s 15th consecutive year of participation—the first for any company in the Korean industry.
At this exhibition, Kyungdong Navien introduced its eco-friendly, high-efficiency innovative technologies and unveiled its blueprint for capturing the global HVAC market. Its flagship product was the ‘Condensing Hydro Furnace (NPF),’ an ambitious development created to enter the North American main heating market, which has an annual scale of 4.7 million units. First shipped in November of last year, the product incorporates world-class ‘condensing’ technology to resolve the shortcomings of conventional products. Because ordinary gas furnaces supply air heated directly by combustion exhaust gases into the interior, the air is very dry and there is a risk of harmful gases entering the room. The Condensing Hydro Furnace, however, supplies air warmed by hot water into the room, addressing the safety issue of harmful gases while providing comfortable air. Another notable feature is its low-vibration design, which reduces noise.
The eco-friendliness unique to condensing technology also sets it apart. Its ‘Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency (AFUE)’—a percentage indicating how efficiently a product provides heating using fuel—reaches 97%, delivering outstanding energy savings. In addition, the product passed the ‘Ultra Low NOx’ standard of the U.S. South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), earning recognition for its excellent nitrogen oxide (NOx) reduction capability. Only eco-friendly products with NOx emissions of 20 ppm or less can pass this standard.
Kyungdong Navien also presented a high-efficiency ‘heat pump’ equipped with an inverter compressor. A heat pump is a heating and cooling product that harnesses external thermal energy such as geothermal heat and air heat. Recently drawing attention as an eco-friendly technology alongside ‘condensing,’ the heat pump will be paired with the ‘Condensing Hydro Furnace’ by Kyungdong Navien to provide heating in winter and cooling in summer. Through this, the company plans to offer integrated HVAC services that further enhance consumer convenience and to accelerate its push into the North American market.
The company also exhibited its condensing water heater and boiler products, each holding the No. 1 position in the North American market. In 2008, Kyungdong Navien launched the ‘Condensing Tankless Water Heater (NPE)’ in a North American market then dominated by tank-type water heaters, writing a success story by shifting the market paradigm toward ‘eco-friendliness.’ Indeed, the ‘condensing water heater’ market, which stood at around 20,000 units annually in 2008, grew to about 800,000 units last year, with Kyungdong Navien accounting for roughly half of that. As of 2022, the company also maintains the No. 1 position in the condensing boiler market with a share of about 31%.