Parth Kumavat

I am a research fellow in the Heat and Power Technology division of the Department of Energy. My research project is a part of a Horizon Europe funded project named I-UPS, which involves development of a FOAK high temperature heat pump in flexible energy systems including molten salts based thermal energy storage (TES) for on-demand decarbonised industrial heat. Primarily my objective is to design and develop a novel, compact heat exchanger that is to be directed by the genetic algorithm approaches and prototype those optimised solutions via additive manufacturing techniques.

Background

In 2016, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Vellore Institute of Technology; India. Following to that I participated in a 4 month Summer School Program of Smulation and Automation at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Through 2017, I joined Indian Institute of Bombay as a Research Assistant in Cryogenics Department with a research project on Liquid Helium based Pulse-tube cryocoolers. Later in the same year I was enrolled in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland for a Masters of Science program in Mehanical Engineering. Further in 2018, I was offered with a fully funded scholarship for a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. The research was focussed on a comprehensive experimenal and numerical investigation of heat transfer enchancement for laminar pulsating flows in minichannels. The motivation for the project was in relation to the thermal management of micro-electronics via liquid cooling techniques. In 2022, I collaborated with colleagues in Trinity College to work as a Post-doc for a Huawei Research Centre, Sweden funded project on an innvovative two-phase natural convection heat sink for thermal management in 5G telecommunication systems. The project primarily was focussed on extensive experimental techniques involvng development of Al material porous functional surfaces, testing the evaporation wicking parameters combined with enhancement of vertical condensation surfaces to achieve a low thermal resistance for a system with total of 800W discrete heat sources.  

Subsequently, in 2023 I joined my colleageus to work on an SFI-Ireland National Challenge funded project (DRIVE) on battery thermal management solutions for Electric Vehicles.The project involved design and development of liquid immersion cooling aproach via experimental and numerical investigation of various cooling formats on both cylinderical and prismatic cells with fast charging and discharging techniques.

Apart from the research activities, I have actively engaged in delivering teaching modules during my PhD accounting to about 650 contact hours in specialised courses of Fluid Mechanics, Heat and Mass transfer, CAD and CFD. Additionally I served as a technical IT administrator in the department to assist with online delivery of modules and courses across all Engineering streams during the 2020-2021 year. I have gained practical Industrial experience with my work as a part-time Engineer in Diageo-Guiness Brewery through 2021-2023 working in the operations and maintenance team for a 15 MW CHP power plant. 

Research at KTH

In the I-UPS project, my work involves towards an integrated heat pump configuration with the focus to enable higher modularity, flexibility, and efficiency for heating decarbonisation also leveraging waste heat recovery and contributing to the circularity of the industrial sector. The research is in close collaboration and contribution with a consortium of industrial partners ENERIN, Kyoto Group AS, RPOW and university partner University of Genova. Apart from the research, I will be closely working with my colleagues for the project co-ordination activities of the consortium.