UK thermal energy storage company Sunamp has appointed Dr. Alan McGurk as its new Head of Engineering. Alan is responsible for leading all development, design and continuous improvement of the company's thermal storage products. This is a major strategic hire for Sunamp, which is headquartered in Scotland and where it manufactures its world-leading heat batteries for sale around the world.
Alan has previously held Engineering Management positions within the Defence industry with Thales, within the Oil & Gas sector with Oceaneering and within the Heating & Controls market with Honeywell. He holds a Bachelors, Masters and PhD degree within Engineering, is an accredited Six Sigma Black Belt and Lean Expert, as well being a STEM Ambassador helping to inspire young people to study science, technology engineering and maths related subjects to aspire to work in these areas.
Sunamp's mission is to decarbonise heat energy globally. Sunamp heat batteries cut fuel costs and carbon emissions by optimising the use of renewable energy in HVAC equipment for heating, hot water, process heat, refrigeration and air conditioning. They are up to ten times more energy dense and use up to four times less space than conventional systems such as hot water cylinders.
Sunamp thermal storage technology can also be used off-grid and to move waste heat by road, rail or waterway in shipping container units to commercial districts, factories, housing, leisure facilities, district heating/cooling networks, or any other site with a hot water, cooling or heating requirement. The technology also has applications in the automotive sector, driving emissions down and air quality up.
Commenting on the appointment, Sunamp CEO Andrew Bissell said: “We are excited to have someone of Alan's outstanding experience join our senior management team to help accelerate our growth strategy and cement our position as true market leaders. He brings with him specialised knowledge and important skillsets which will strengthen our product engineering and manufacturing scale-up capability.”
Alan commented: “I have followed Sunamp's evolution from being one of the country's most exciting innovative start-ups tipped as one to watch, to becoming an established manufacturing company selling its world-leading products to an international market. I'm really looking forward to building upon the strong foundations already established and to further drive new product development through best-in-class innovation and cross-functional collaboration.”
Sunamp products contain high performance phase change materials which has been awarded A Grade RAL Certification, the independent quality mark and the only global standard for Phase Change Material (PCM) and PCM products. The award confirms performance with no noticeable degradation to 10,000 cycles – the equivalent of over 13 years daily use at 2 cycles per day of hot water application.
