Advansor has announced the SteelXL Heat Pump, a new CO2 (R744) heat pump that offers up to 5MW (1,421TR) of heating capacity in a single unit and up to 50MW (14,217TR) in parallel installation.
The new SteelXL Heat Pump can use air or water as a heat source to produce hot water at temperatures of up to 95°C (203°F) with inlet water temperatures up to 60°C (140°F). The temperature profile of 60/95°C “enables easy integration with existing piping systems” and makes SteelXL “an ideal solution for replacing fossil fuel boilers,” according to Advansor.
Its operating range is from –14 to 45°C (6 to 113°F), and, in addition to heating, the SteelXL Heat Pump has a max cooling capacity of 3MW (853TR). Advansor’s new CO2 heat pump can be optioned with ejectors, permanent magnet motors and variable speed drives, among other components, enabling it to achieve a COP of up to 4.0.
Advansor said its new heat pump is a fit for several industries in the industrial HVAC sector, including food processing, district heating and commercial buildings. With a per-unit heating capacity of 5MW and a total capacity of up to 50MW, Advansor’s new heat pump is well-suited for a variety of district heating applications. Its modularity also makes it a fit in projects designed to be completed in stages. Its ability to fit with a building’s existing pipes and radiators cuts down the time and cost of retrofits in commercial buildings.
While 95°C isn’t hot enough to decarbonize the majority of the industrial HVAC sector, it can handle a large chunk, with approximately 30% of industrial heat demand in the U.S. required at 100°C (212°F) or lower.
Going big
Denmark-based Advansor has consistently pushed the bounds when it comes to CO2, particularly CO2 refrigeration systems. In January 2025 it announced a new SteelXL CO2 rack with up to 2.7MW (767TR) of cooling capacity. Along with cooling, the rack also offers up to 1.9MW (540TR) of capacity for freezing, 4MW (1,137TR) for heating and 0.5MW (142TR) of air-conditioning. Like the SteelXL Heat Pump, the rack can be installed in parallel to achieve a max cooling capacity of 50MW.
In June 2025 Advansor announced that it supplied six SteelXL CO2 racks with a total capacity of 5.5MW (1,563TR) for a Maersk distribution center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The rack provides 2.4MW (682TR) of cooling, 700kW (199TR) of freezing and 2.4MW of heating.
In August of the same year, Advansor said it installed “Latin America’s largest single CO2 rack,” a 1.7MW (483TR) SteelXL unit in a new Walmart distribution center in San José, Costa Rica. To increase efficiency, the rack uses parallel compression and permanent magnet motors to drive the compressors. The system provides 950kW (270TR) of medium-temperature (MT) cooling capacity, 510kW (145TR) of low-temperature (LT) capacity and 246kW (70TR) for heating. Recovered heat from the system is used for freezer-room floor heating, while a separate system provides hot gas defrost. Local contractor Dicoma Corporation handled the system setup.
The SEPR (seasonal energy performance ratio) of the MT system is 3.56 and 1.96 for the LT system. Unlike COP, which reflects system efficiency at fixed conditions, SEPR represents performance over a typical year, accounting for varying loads and ambient temperatures.
