Unicla International’s new eDrive compressor has been hailed as a ‘standout’ winner of the 2024 Australian Good Design Award engineering category.
The 80-strong global jury panel was impressed by the eDrive’s innovative approach to thermal management in mobile applications. Its focus on sustainability and efficiency represented a significant advancement in the industry, showcasing a forward-thinking design.
Unicla director, Mark Mitchell received the coveted award at a ceremony at Sydney’s International Convention Centre on 20 September 2024.
The Unicla eDrive is an advanced fully electric compressor designed for high-performance mobile air conditioning and refrigeration systems. It caters to industries relying on electrical power, such as electric buses and rail.
Unicla claims its eDrive meets the holy grail of performance, making it almost impossible to fail.
The compressor can be interrogated remotely to reveal its vital statistics, leading to a faster and more efficient solution to an operational issue. By monitoring pressures, temperatures and superheat, the eDrive can pinpoint failures in the whole system.
‘Celebrating our 60th anniversary as a brand, and winning the Australian Good Design Award in the same month, we joked that it had taken Unicla 60 years to get here. But the joke is partly true. Our eDrive technology is a dedicated blend of technology and previous patents held by us over many years. We have been a leader in swashplate technology at a number of levels for many years. In our eDrive we used lots of good stuff that we are well known for which we blended with some new secrets, and is now part of the patents we have just filed in China, Europe and the USA. The result is a compressor with enhanced isentropic efficiency, long life, and high performance in hot ambient conditions,’ Mark said.
‘As we roll our new eDrive compressors this month in systems operating in the harsh conditions of mining machines and rail locomotives, we are already proving these benefits to the technicians working on these systems, and to the owners and end users who expect to see the monetary results of enhanced performance and zero failure.
From this perspective our good design is putting its credentials where it counts,’ he added.
Rachel Wye, managing director of Good Design Australia, said the Good Design Awards celebrated the transformative power of design in solving complex business, environmental and societal challenges. ‘This year’s winners showcase how design can help drive innovation, generate growth and embed sustainability principles,’ she added.
The Australian Good Design Awards, established in 1958, is the country’s most prestigious international accolade for design and innovation.
Mark has paid tribute to the eDrive development team that has broken new ground for compressor design on a global level.
Unicla Australia eDrive development team.
Left to right: Chris Conway-Lamb (industrial design engineer), Daniel Brown (test engineer), Amir Jahangari (head of engineering), Jon Mitchell (global service and technical support), René Le Miere (business manager), Mohammad Arqam (research scholar Griffith University), Peter Woodfield (Griffith University professor of engineering), Mark Mitchell (head of the SuperCool Group) and Matthew Dyhrberg (electrical engineer).
Other team members, not shown in this photograph were Nick Fritzkowski (IT engineer – NAF Solutions), Ritesh Lal (Red Embedded Design), Hongqiu Yan (chief production engineer at Unicla’s China plant).
