The HITEMMP (High Intensity Thermal Exchange through Materials, and Manufacturing Processes) program will develop novel approaches and technologies for design topologies, materials, and manufacturing of high temperature, high pressure, and highly compact heat exchangers. These heat exchangers will enable efficient and power dense power generation cycles for applications in transportation, electricity generation, and industrial sectors. If successful, the materials and manufacturing advances from the HITEMMP program may also yield broader benefits in other operating regimes, and in applications beyond heat exchangers and power cycles.
The HITEMMP program targets heat exchangers to operate in environments where temperatures and pressures are simultaneously in excess of 800°C and 80 bar, with operating lifetimes of tens of thousands of hours. These heat exchangers must offer superior thermal performance and low pumping power requirements, and must also be cost competitive and durable (per metrics prescribed in Section I.D of the FOA). These performance goals are beyond the capability of any existing technologies, but ARPA-E believes that recent advances in materials, topological design methodologies, and manufacturing technologies can be leveraged to realize the desired extreme-environment heat exchanger capability. Specific developments include:
- The identification and development of materials capable of withstanding extreme temperature and pressure conditions while featuring attractive thermo-mechanical and manufacturability properties;
- Advances in additive and/or subtractive manufacturing techniques to enable the cost-effective realization of small structural feature sizes, smooth surface finishes, and other enabling heat exchanger characteristics; and
- The refinement and application of advanced design methodologies to leverage new material capabilities while incorporating manufacturing constraints.
ARPA-E has issued this FOA to encourage the formation of multi-disciplinary teams to work to overcome the materials, design, and manufacturing technology barriers that have thus far prevented the realization of catalyzing the development of the desired extreme environment heat exchanger capability. ARPA-E has identified two categories of recuperator-type heat exchangers (> 800°C and > 1100°C, corresponding to metallic and to ceramic/composite materials sets, respectively) as challenge problems.
Each category has performance metrics, as described in Section I.D of this FOA. Applicants are expected to select one of the two categories. In each category, ARPA-E anticipates that teams will initially execute an analytical/computational design effort, will reduce key risks through small-scale heat exchanger module experiments, and will demonstrate a heat exchanger with the desired performance and durability at 50 kW thermal (kWth) scale.