“When things get complicated, the market often says: Go to Weiss Klimatechnik. They can handle that.”
Energetic, communicative, and passionate about thermodynamics – Anne-Marie Dejongh is ready for the Tech Lunch. Along with her Caesar salad with shrimp, she orders a water, followed by a cappuccino. In the interview, she shares where her passion for thermodynamics comes from and how it helps her develop custom cleanrooms and measurement rooms every single day.
What’s new in climate control technology?
A lot is happening right now. The requirements for measurement rooms and cleanrooms are increasing, and high-precision solutions are needed more and more frequently. At the same time, the required temperature and humidity ranges are becoming wider. Aside from that, we're currently very busy with exciting tenders for large-scale projects.
What makes large-scale projects exciting?
The dimensions. Physically, they have the same fundamentals. But with major projects, many things are different because additional aspects and parameters must be taken into account. And while tenders usually come with extensive specifications, there is very little communication and consulting. That is why we have to estimate or deduce certain things. Of course, our experience helps us a lot there.
You also handle a lot of special projects. What makes them unique?
Special projects are our core business. We build cleanrooms and measurement rooms for very different sectors, from pharmacies to the cosmetics industry, from plant engineering to research institutions, and from museums to archives. Every customer has specific requirements, and for us, many of them mean: high precision.
Are there any trends you are noticing in special projects?
More and more manufacturers are selling their products worldwide. Because of this, they need to know whether they also function in other regions and under different climate conditions. A makeup product, for example, behaves differently at 10 °C and 50% humidity than at 40 °C and 90% humidity. Therefore, the cleanrooms and measurement rooms where these tests are conducted need to cover as many climate zones as possible.
What were the most unusual climate rooms you have designed?
Oh, plenty come to mind. We designed a room to dry salami quickly and evenly, and a test chamber for hairspray that simulates various climate zones worldwide. For a university, we developed a test room to research the growth of parasites on livestock. We also air-condition rooms for calibrating machines or for testing adhesives under different climate conditions.
What is the biggest challenge in such projects?
First, we have to understand exactly what is needed and for what purpose. How many people will be working in the room, what humidity and heat load will they introduce, or what kind of contamination is to be expected. Can we use filters within the unit, or do we need additional HEPA filters? And if so, what does that mean for the air conditioning unit: Do we need to upscale its dimensions for the required air volumes and pressure? A lot of topics come together here that influence each other and must be factored in. Naturally , this also includes the topic of energy efficiency.
How do you ensure energy efficiency in your projects?
That varies from project to project. One solution, for example, is our room-in-room concept. This means that inside a larger cleanroom with lower requirements, we build a chamber that precisely maintains the higher requirements needed for a specific process step – without having to air-condition the entire room in an energy-intensive way.
What excites you about your projects?
I find thermodynamics fascinating. I know a lot of people don't like it because it's very abstract. But once you've really grasped it, everything becomes clear and it's a lot of fun. That's why the h-x diagram, or Mollier diagram, is my starting point for every project. Once I've calculated it properly and used some formulas and values that we have on file, I can easily derive all the technical parameters for a project.
Isn't that a bit boring, then?
Quite the opposite! For us, every project is a fresh start. You can never know in advance exactly how temperature and humidity will behave. There are also no AI tools yet for our specialized applications. That's why, alongside the h-x diagram, our internal formula collections and processes are enormously important. More than 40 years of climate technology experience is built into them.
Why are empirical values so important to you?
In the field we work in, a lot of things aren't simply black and white. There are many gray areas. It's not like the automotive or pharmaceutical industry, where there's a standard with fixed values for everything. Many customers come to us – planners, end customers, scientists – who tell us what they want. But often, in the course of the conversation, it turns out that they actually need something different, or that what they want can be achieved much better, more efficiently, or more flexibly in a different way. Experience is enormously important for making that kind of assessment.
What core advantages do customers get from working with you?
We offer high-quality solutions for individual requirements. Where large plant engineering firms can often only deliver off-the-shelf solutions, we develop modified standard solutions. For this, we use climate control units and control systems from our own development and manufacturing and adapt them to specific needs. Through this, we can achieve the very high accuracy and stability of temperature and humidity required. Unlike with third-party equipment, we know exactly what our units can do and how they interact with other components. For example, sensors, supplementary heating, or adsorption dryers, when it comes to high precision. Or when we integrate buffer solutions to stabilize cold or warm water supplied by the customer. Or when we program our own control technology.
How would you describe the strengths of Weiss Klimatechnik?
Essentially, it comes down to three things: specialization, range, and experience. We know what we can do, but also where our limits are. Most of our projects fall within the temperature range of +10° C to +40° C and 10% to 80% humidity. When requirements fall outside that range, we're happy to hand the project over to our colleagues in other divisions, and customers get a suitable solution there. Despite the growing pressure on quality – which we feel too, of course – we stay committed to quality that genuinely serves our customers.
Born in Belgium and a graduate engineer in electromechanics, she has traveled widely around the world. Ten years ago, she landed in inside sales at Weiss Klimatechnik. There, she plans smaller special projects as well as large-scale systems. She inherited her fascination with thermodynamics from her father, who himself used to carry out large-scale climate technology projects. In her free time, she enjoys traveling. When she isn't designing custom cleanrooms or measurement rooms, she also enjoys tailoring in her private life – though not climate rooms, but custom dresses instead.