MUMBAI, India, Sept. 14 -- Intellectual Property India has published a patent application (202641107330 A) filed by Hindustan Institute Of Technology And Science on September 07, 2026, for Design Of Compact Heat Exchanger For Waste Heat Recovery.
Inventors include Abishek J; Ravikumar Solomon; Sandhya Jayakumar; Rajesh Munusamy; and Sivasankar Arumugam.
The application for the patent was published on September 11, 2026, under issue no. 37/2026.
Abstract: In thermal power plants, a large amount of energy is lost in the form of low-grade heat, especially from turbine exhaust during the steam cycle. This heat is usually rejected to the surroundings, which reduces the overall efficiency of the system. Recovering this waste heat is important for improving energy utilization and reducing fuel consumption. In this project, a compact shell-and-tube heat exchanger is designed and analyzed to improve steam heat recovery efficiency. The main focus of this study is to enhance heat transfer performance by using perforated circular fins and comparing the results with a conventional plain tube heat exchanger. A three- dimensional model of the heat exchanger was developed using SolidWorks, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was carried out under steady-state turbulent flow conditions. Water was used as the working fluid on both shell and tube sides with specified mass flow rates and inlet temperatures. The results obtained from the simulation show that the addition of perforated fins significantly improves the thermal performance of the heat exchanger. The heat transfer rate increased from 8.38 MW in the plain tube configuration to 12.04 MW in the finned configuration. Similarly, the effectiveness improved from 0.191 to 0.274. Although there was a slight increase in pressure drop, it remained within acceptable operating limits. The improvement in performance is mainly due to the increased surface area and enhanced turbulence created by the perforated fins. This study demonstrates that the proposed design is efficient, compact, and suitable for waste heat recovery applications. It can contribute to improved thermal efficiency and energy savings in power plant systems.
Disclaimer: Curated by HT Syndication.
