Designing the material to fit the duty, not the other way around.
KoRi Technologies is an engineering-led materials company developing computational inverse design for water-sorption materials — starting from the thermal duty a building or process actually has, and searching for the framework chemistry that meets it.
Moisture is one of the most expensive things a building moves.
In humid climates, a large share of an air-conditioning system's work goes not to lowering temperature but to condensing water out of the air. That work is done by overcooling air below its dew point and then reheating it — an approach that has been standard for decades, and an expensive one as electricity costs rise.
Latent load dominates
Dehumidification is a major, and in some climates the largest, component of cooling energy demand.
The cycle is doing double work
Vapor-compression equipment is sized and run to remove moisture, not just heat — then the air is reheated.
Waste heat goes unused
Low-grade heat is available on most sites and is rarely put to work regenerating a sorbent.
Our starting hypothesis. Intercept the moisture with a solid sorbent before it reaches the vapor-compression cycle, and regenerate that sorbent with heat that is already being thrown away. The engineering is well understood. The limiting factor is the material.
MOFForge — inverse design for sorption materials.
Metal-organic frameworks are crystalline materials built from metal clusters joined by organic linkers. They are mostly empty space, and that internal pore structure can be tuned to take up water at one humidity and release it under modest heat.
The difficulty is scale. The number of chemically buildable frameworks runs into the millions, and each real candidate takes weeks of laboratory work to synthesize and characterize. Screening that space by trial and error is not a practical path.
MOFForge inverts the search. Instead of making materials and testing what they happen to do, we begin with the duty — climate, available regeneration temperature, cycle time — and search framework chemistry for candidates that satisfy it.
State the duty
Ambient conditions, regeneration temperature, working capacity, cycle time.
Search the space
Physics-based models score candidate framework chemistries against that duty.
Rank candidates
Results are filtered for materials that are cheap, low-toxicity and practical to make.
Validate
Predictions are checked against published measurements, and against new bench data.
Grounded in measured data
The engine is calibrated against publicly available experimental sorption measurements, not against simulation alone. Where the published record is thin, expanding it is part of the work.
Built by engineers, for a duty
Our team comes from HVAC, plumbing and fire-protection design. The output is specified the way a mechanical engineer specifies equipment — against a real load under real conditions.
One method, several loads.
Any process that has to move water into or out of air is a candidate duty for the same design approach.
Building dehumidification
Sorbent-assisted conditioning for humid climates, regenerated by low-grade heat.
Atmospheric water capture
Pulling potable water from ambient air in locations where supply is constrained.
Process & storage drying
Humidity control for manufacturing, agriculture and archival environments.
Waste-heat recovery
Turning heat that is currently rejected into useful regeneration duty.
Development stage, and working.
MOFForge is running today and producing ranked candidates. Our current focus is broadening the measured-data foundation the engine is calibrated against, and moving the top-ranked candidates from prediction into the laboratory.
We are actively developing the platform under federal and state innovation funding programs, and we are open about what is settled and what is still being proven.
We are looking to talk to…
- Academic chemistry groups with synthesis and vapor-sorption characterization capability.
- Building owners and operators carrying heavy dehumidification loads who want to evaluate a different approach.
- Equipment manufacturers interested in sorbent-assisted conditioning.
- Research and funding partners in clean energy and water technology, particularly in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.
An engineering-led team based in Hawaiʻi.
We came to materials design from the load side — designing the mechanical systems that pay the energy cost of moisture every day.
Tell us your duty.
If you have a dehumidification or water-capture problem, a laboratory capability, or a research partnership in mind, we would like to hear about it. Technical detail is welcome — conditions, loads, and what you have already tried.
Email koalii@kori-technologies.com
Location Pearl City, Hawaiʻi, USA