Exhaust Heat Recovery Heat Exchanger

Heat recovered from Navy ship gas turbine engine exhausts could significantly reduce shipboard fuel use by providing heating, cooling or additional power output at no increase in fuel use. However, current heat recovery heat exchangers have durability problems, are too large for packaging in current exhaust ducts and have pressure drops that reduce power output. Altex has identified an advanced heat recovery heat exchanger design that can address all of these issues, at a cost lower than conventional heat exchangers. Preliminary tests have shown the good heat transfer and pressure drop potential of the concept. Under the proposed Phase I project, the concept will be adapted to a heat recovery application of interest to the Navy, and a sub-scale test article will be built and tested in the laboratory to show the feasibility of the concept. In addition, Phase I Option tests will test the concept as integrated with a gas turbine. These results, combined with a cost evaluation, will ready the concept for Phase II prototype development and testing at 250kW scale.