What an Honour
No stranger to tackling the impossible, with his ability to challenge traditional concepts and totally reinvent them, Ron Conry has been finding solutions and fixing problems in the air conditioning industry since the 1960’s. This has resulted in enormous leaps forward in technological developments and environmental sustainability and CO2 emission reductions. He has today been recognised for these extraordinary achievements has been awarded the Member of the Order of Australia.
Ron Conry AM has been awarded the
Member of the Order of Australia.
Since its inception in the 1900’s air conditioning and refrigeration has been improving our quality of life. From prolonging the life of our food, boosting manufacturing capabilities, improving medical practices, enabling technological advancements and regulating temperatures to providing greater comfort in our indoor environments. Our world had become very dependent on this, often under-appreciated invention. While the benefits of air conditioning and refrigeration are enormous, and they dramatically improve our daily lives, they do not come without a significant cost to the environment. It is estimated that twenty percent of global power consumption is attributed to air conditioning resulting in billions of ton of CO2 emissions globally each year.
For nearly 100 years, air conditioning technology remained relatively unchanged – large, noisy, maintenance-heavy, power hungry machines churned away, cooling our built environment. Due to the increase in comfort and the benefits they provided, no one bothered to question “Is there a better way?” until Ron Conry, a refrigeration technician by trade who was not afraid of a challenge, having built a career around dealing with all the issues associated with traditional technology decided to tackle the issues.
Ron started the design process by literally taking a blank sheet of paper and jotting down all of the issues that plagued all the machines he had ever worked on throughout his career, which he then set about solving these with his new compressor. Having been in the industry for over 25 years, Ron was acutely aware that the Achilles heel of the industry was the compressors need for lubrication and eliminating oil became top of that list. Also on his list were efficiency, refrigerant type (for environmental sustainability), size, noise, vibration, weight, and cost but the biggest challenge was going to be the oil.
“Ron’s compressor technology has become the dominant technology in the HVAC market”
Drawing from inspiration he had seen in a turbo charger in 1984, Ron decided this new compressor, now known as the Danfoss Turbocor compressor, would need to be a small micro turbine machine. Having spent most of 1993 researching, he knew that the technology he would need did not yet exist but recognised the bones for what he envisaged he would require were starting to emerge with electronics and other industries making advances. With the hopes that the other industries would catch up and be ready with the technology he had planned, in 1994 Ron gathered a team to turn his revolutionary concept into reality.
Thus began what would be one of the biggest undertakings of his career, a development process that took about 7 years, in which he invented more than a dozen new technologies to solve various problems. He was told many times by many world experts, and by their text books, that what he was doing was impossible, but fortunately his incredible problem solving skills, belief in himself and grit and determination eventually paid off and the oil-free, magnetic bearing Turbocor compressor was born. This compressor Ron developed was the first significant leap forward in the industry which is so heavily relied on in nearly 100 years and would set the new benchmark for efficiency that has revolutionised the HVAC industry globally.
“This compressor Ron developed was the first significant leap forward in the industry.”
Over the past 20 years Ron’s compressor technology has become the dominant technology in the HVAC market, driving building efficiencies to unprecedented levels and saving approximately a gigaton, or a billion tons of CO2 emissions. You will find it installed not only in most large buildings throughout Australia but all over the world, with well over 100,000 of these compressors now operating globally.
This project is just one of many successful, problem solving, revolutionary inventions Ron has breathed to life. However, despite Ron’s enormous contributions to making the world more sustainable, for which Ron has received this Member of the Order of Australia recognition, he is working as hard as ever pursuing further ground-breaking advances in this field.
In the past Ron has simply focused on one component of the air conditioning system at a time. However, in his latest venture, Conry Tech, he is reinventing air-conditioning from the ground up and has once again filled a “blank piece of paper”. Ron believes that his brand new approach will save more than a gigaton (a billion tons) of CO2 emissions, paving the way to a more sustainable future and he is in the process of raising funding to bring his latest technology to market.
“Ron believes his greatest contributions to the industry and to the environment are still yet to come.”
It is a great honour for Ron to be awarded the Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his great contribution to the HVAC industry and the environment but he assures us that he is not done yet, and believes his greatest contributions are still to come.
You can read more about this award here, and find more information about Ron Conry on page 42 of this list of recipients: