I-Corps: Study of Commercialization Aspects for nFE Technology

用于除热或增热的设备和系统通常被称为"热管理平台"。"这些系统影响各种应用，从冷却（冰箱、空调、光电芯片/激光器、计算机等），石油勘探（例如，深钻探），生物技术（例如，用于核酸的快速热循环），用于发电（例如，涉及煤、太阳能、核能、地热能等的热电厂）。该团队发现，通过使用纳米颗粒涂层和具有纳米级表面粗糙度的工程表面（这被称为“纳米鳍效应”或“nFE”技术），可以增强制冷剂的沸腾和冷凝。所提出的创新表面（与工程纳米级粗糙度或纳米鳍）被证明是显着增强沸腾过程中的热传递的粗糙度增加。这是非常期望的，因为它能够使涉及在高热负荷下沸腾的装置小型化，同时还能够降低操作温度。I-Corps项目中的拟议活动将用于深入了解nFe技术的目标部署的合适细分市场以及需要加强的nFE技术方面，以便更好地响应各个细分市场中客户的需求。nFE技术存在巨大的市场需求（仅美国的节能设备市场就达到51亿美元，预计未来5年将以8%的速度增长）。新兴经济体空调使用的指数级增长进一步增加了设计太阳能热增益节能解决方案的紧迫性。 热管理要求将显著影响电子封装行业的增长。"nanoFin Effect（nFE）"被发现并用于通过将纳米颗粒涂层和添加剂与温度纳米传感器集成来开发可调热阻网络。数值模型表明，nFE来自于纳米颗粒的增强表面积与界面热阻网络的耦合。因此，nFE技术可用于各种紧急热管理需求。这项研究解决了许多行业（和国防部）的一个重要技术瓶颈，并具有巨大的商业影响潜力。将nFE技术渗透到各种细分市场将在以下方面提供变革性解决方案：节能（建筑物/暖通空调）、可再生能源（聚光太阳能/CSP、光生光电/PV）、传统发电（核能、煤炭、地热）、运输（航空航天、汽车、船舶）、土木工程（利用微/纳米流体技术进行水资源管理）、化学/加工行业（石油化工），电力管理（光电子学、芯片冷却）、国土安全和生命科学（农业、生物医学、制药/治疗学、药物发现、药物递送）。nFE的一个具体的市场应用具有低进入壁垒-是定制紧凑型热交换器（HX）和传热流体（HTF）的性能。使用nFE技术可以为从能源和国防到加工工业应用的各种应用定制各种热交换器。其他应用包括：（a）生物技术;（B）国土安全/生物安全;（c）能源收集（包括石油和天然气勘探、常规/不可再生和可再生能源技术）;（d）能源效率/可持续性。

Devices and systems that are employed for heat removal or heat addition are often referred to as "Thermal Management Platforms." These systems impact various applications ranging from cooling (refrigerators, air-conditioners, opto-electronic chips/ lasers, computers, etc.), to oil exploration (e.g., deep drilling), to biotechnology (e.g., rapid thermo-cyling for nucleic acids), to power generation (e.g., thermal power plants involving coal, solar, nuclear, geo-thermal power, etc.). This team has discovered that boiling and condensation of refrigerants can be enhanced by using nanoparticle coatings and using engineered surfaces with nano-scale surface roughness (this is called the "nanoFin Effect" or "nFE" technology). The proposed innovative surfaces (with engineered nano-scale roughness or nanofins) are shown to significantly enhance heat transfer during boiling as the roughness is increased. This is highly desirable as it enables miniaturization of devices involving boiling at high heat loads while also enabling the reduction in operating temperatures. The proposed activities in the I-Corps project will be utilized to gain insights about the suitable markets segments for targeting deployment of nFe Technology and the aspects of nFE Technology that needs to be strengthened in order to be more responsive to needs of customers in various market segments. Substantial market demand exists for nFE technology (the market for energy efficient devices in the US alone was $5.1 billion and is projected to grow at a rate of 8% over the next 5 years). The exponential increase in the use of air-conditioning in emerging economies adds further urgency to the need to devise energy-efficient solutions for solar heat gain. Thermal management requirements will significantly affect the growth of electronic packaging industries. "nanoFin Effect (nFE)" was discovered and leveraged for developing tunable thermal-impedance networks by integrating nanoparticle coatings and additives with temperature nano-sensors. Numerical models indicate that nFE arises from the coupling of enhanced surface area of nanoparticles with the interfacial thermal impedance networks. Hence nFE Technology can be leveraged for various acute thermal management needs. The proposed study addresses an important technical bottleneck for many industries (and the Department of Defense), and has a great potential for significant commercial impact. Impregnation of the nFE technology into a variety of market segments would provide transformative solutions in: energy conservation (buildings/ HVAC), renewable energy (concentrated solar power/ CSP, photo-voltaics/ PV), traditional power generation (nuclear, coal, geothermal), transportation (aerospace, automotive, marine), civil engineering (water resources management using micro/nano-fluidics), chemical/ process industries (petro-chemicals), power management (opto-electronics, chip cooling), homeland security, and life-sciences (agriculture, biomedical, pharmaceuticals/ therapeutics, drug discovery, drug delivery). One specific marketable application of nFE with low barriers to entry - is tailoring the performance of compact heat exchangers (HX) and Heat Transfer Fluids (HTF). Wide varieties of heat exchangers can be tailored using nFE Technology for various applications ranging from energy and defense to process industry applications. Other applications include: (a) Biotechnology; (b) Homeland Security/ Bio-Safety; (c) Energy Harvesting (including oil and gas exploration, conventional/non-renewable and renewal energy technologies); and (d) Energy Efficiency/ Sustainability.