SCM Frigo Details Its Plans to Disrupt the European Commercial HVAC Sector with the CO₂ SMART Heat Pump

SCM Frigo’s decision to develop a heat pump grew directly out of decades of experience in CO₂ refrigeration, heat recovery and false-load management for commercial and industrial applications. As that expertise matured, moving into heat pump technology was a natural next step: CO₂’s ability to operate with a high delta-T and deliver high supply temperatures made it particularly well suited to heating applications, and we recognized an opportunity to apply our existing know-how to a new product category.

For the intelligence and software side of the project, we partnered with Fenagy because of their specific experience with CO₂ direct expansion heat pumps. Their strengths in software and control logic complemented our own in mechanical and refrigeration engineering.

Developing the SMART Heat Pump required considerably more than adapting existing refrigeration equipment. It meant rethinking core functionalities from the ground up rather than simply relabelling a booster system as a heat pump.

In particular, the hydraulic design and water-side engineering demanded close attention, and this is a fundamentally different discipline from traditional refrigeration work. Our CO₂ experience gave us the technical grounding and the confidence to take on the project, but building a genuine heat pump application meant developing new expertise and treating it as its own distinct engineering challenge, not an extension of an existing one.

Our initial plan was to focus mainly on air-to-water units. As the project progressed, however, both our own market study and the demand we were seeing pointed clearly to a real need for water-to-water heat pumps as well, so we made the decision to develop both configurations in parallel.

At the outset we expected the split to land around 70% air-to-water and 30% water-to-water. Based on the requests we’re receiving, that balance has shifted, and we currently expect something closer to a 50/50 split between the two. Offering both configurations lets us cover a much wider range of building types and applications across Europe than either model could address on its own.

The SMART Heat Pump is currently in serial status and approaching go-to-market, which we expect to complete at the beginning of next year. We already have a solid base of units operating in the field, with our first installation dating back to 2024, giving us real-world operating experience to draw on as we finalize the product ahead of a full commercial launch.

Demand is coming from a broad range of sectors. Multifamily residential buildings and offices form a strong core market, alongside process and industrial applications, including pharmaceutical facilities. Because our water-to-water units can be paired with buffer tanks, they are particularly well-suited to combined air-conditioning and heating needs, and we also see potential in smaller district heating systems. The SMART Heat Pump covers the complete 30–300kW [8.5–85TR] range, and a master–slave configuration allows several units to be linked together on a single project for larger capacity requirements.

CO₂’s key advantage over other natural refrigerants is its ability to operate efficiently across a much wider temperature difference. Hydrocarbon and ammonia [R717] systems generally need to work within a comparatively narrow temperature spread, whereas CO₂ heat pumps handle high delta-T applications extremely well. This makes them best in class for producing hot service or tap water, heating from around 10°C up to 65°C [50°F up to 149°F] in a single pass.

Ammonia systems also tend to be reserved for larger-scale applications, whereas our SMART Heat Pump range starts at 30kW, making it a strong fit across a much broader span of project sizes, including smaller and mid-sized commercial installations. On top of that, CO₂ service technicians are considerably more widely available across Europe than ammonia specialists, a practical advantage for installation, servicing and long-term maintenance support.

The biggest barrier is a general lack of understanding of how the technology actually works, in particular its ability to operate across a much wider temperature spread than conventional heat pumps. Standard heat pumps are typically designed around a 5–10K temperature difference, while CO₂ heat pumps can comfortably handle 20 to 50K. That difference requires the HVAC industry to rethink some long-standing design assumptions.

Heat pump technology in general is still not that well known across much of Europe, and layering CO₂-specific technology on top adds a further degree of complexity for installers, specifiers and end users alike. We believe the way to overcome this is through targeted training, closer information-sharing across the industry and continued education to build familiarity and confidence with CO₂ heat pumps.

It’s worth noting that the SMART Heat Pump’s high delta-T capability also makes it a strong direct replacement for gas or oil boilers in buildings with lower return temperatures – such as those built after 1995 – which is exactly the kind of practical advantage that becomes clear once the technology is better understood.

Rather than pointing to one specific sector, we see natural refrigerant heat pumps having the potential to disrupt commercial HVAC broadly, because the SMART Heat Pump can be adapted to nearly any system where hot water is needed. Whether that means replacing an aging gas boiler or a conventional water-to-water chiller, natural refrigerant heat pumps are increasingly able to step into applications that have historically relied on other technologies.

Looking ahead, we are already developing the next generation of the SMART Heat Pump. We’re targeting even higher performance and COP, and it’s being designed to run at higher ambient temperatures as well as higher inlet and outlet water temperatures. It’s this continued push to expand the operating envelope of CO₂ heat pump technology that we expect to keep unlocking new applications and drive disruption across an increasingly broad section of the commercial HVAC sector rather than any single niche.