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K-State Today

September 23, 2014

ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series presents Srinivas Garimella Sept. 24

Submitted by Tawny Ochs

Srinivas Garimella will present "Microscale Phase-Change as a Basis for Sustainable Thermal Energy Utilization" from 12:30-1:20 p.m. Sept. 24 in Fiedler Auditorium.

Garimella is the Hightower chair in engineering and director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Advances in the understanding of phase-change heat and mass transfer in single- and multi-constituent fluids are enabling the development of compact thermal systems that not only harvest low-grade heat, but also upgrade it to produce power, cooling and other end uses. Such novel thermal systems allow cascading of primary energy utilization over several end uses across the temperature spectrum such that waste heat is minimized to the thermodynamically unavoidable levels.

Representative approaches to exploit the advantages of microscale heat and mass transfer not only in small-scale devices, but also to extend them to Megawatt-scale applications will be presented. Thermally cascaded energy utilization systems for automotive, space-conditioning, waste heat recovery, carbon capture and portable cooling for the military and other hazardous duty applications will be presented. The talk will demonstrate that application of these emerging insights into phase-change heat and mass transfer can have a significant impact on the supply, demand and intermediate stages of the energy pathway.