Heat Exchanger World Magazine October 2025 | Page 14

Industry News
QHeat & Exel Composites develop a solution for energy plant
QHeat has completed its co-created product innovation together with Exel Composites, a publicly listed Finnish company serving global industries with advanced composite solutions. The partners developed and installed custommade composite collector pipes in one of QHeat’ s geothermal wells at the Lounavoima site. Having previously worked with Lounavoima, QHeat was familiar with the plant’ s requirements. It needed a cost-effective and sustainable solution to improve energy efficiency while meeting regulations. Exel designed and manufactured the collector pipes, which QHeat installed using specialized tools. As a pioneer in bespoke composite solutions and with a growing focus on energy applications and circularity, Exel was a natural fit for the collaboration.
While QHeat owns the solution and patent for the geothermal well technology, Exel’ s R & D team and decades of composites expertise played a crucial part in the co-creation project. Both parties were equally impressed by each other’ s expertise. The collector pipes needed to withstand their own weight two kilometers underground, while also insulating heat to ensure energy isn’ t lost during transfer. Exel’ s composite solution rose to the occasion, being metal-free, light-weight, optimized for flow and insulation, and recyclable. The pipes are made of fiberglass utilizing a continuous manufacturing process called pultrusion. This material might seem unconventional compared to acid-resistant steel or plastics. However, traditional materials weren’ t a good fit for this case: metals conduct heat, and plastic lacks the mechanical strength required at such depths.
QHeat and Exel Composites have created composite pipes that improve the energy efficiency of the Lounavoima waste-to-energy plant. The tailored composite collector pipes were developed to meet the plant’ s specific needs, with a focus on durability, sustainability, and recyclability.
Enwave commissions its news Enwave Green Heat™ plant
Enwave Energy Corporation( Enwave) commissioned its new Enwave Green Heat™ Plant during a ceremony at the Pearl Street Energy Centre in Toronto. This announcement is a monumental step in further enabling Enwave to provide low-carbon heating through its Enwave Green Heat™ program to Toronto’ s world-renowned district energy system. In an effort to provide decarbonization at scale, the plant
will leverage waste heat from Enwave’ s Deep Lake Water Cooling( DLWC) system customers – including data centres, hospitals, scientific research facilities, and lab spaces – which is then upgraded through the electrified heat pump into hot water. This allows the plant to provide heat to other district-connected customers, while potentially reducing new electricity peak generation, distribution, and
transmission infrastructure that would otherwise be required if heating were provided by standalone electrified solutions. Enwave’ s award-winning DLWC system and its Enwave Green Heat™ Plant directly support Ontario’ s first Integrated Energy Plan, which aims to ensure that the Province of Ontario has the energy it needs to power homes and industries, today and in the decades to come.
The new plant will have a total electricity demand of approximately 6MW when it is serving its full thermal load and has been designed with the potential to reduce its peak electricity demand by up to 6MW – supporting the reliability of Ontario’ s electricity system while continuing to meet the heating and cooling needs of Enwave’ s thermal energy customers.
SÄKAPHEN and Donelli joining forces for heat exchanger protection
Conflux Joins Honeywell-Led TheMa4HERA consortium
SÄKAPHEN and Donelli Alexo, part of Gruppo Donelli( Legnano, Italy), have been partners for over 20 years now: the former as a manufacturer of industrial anti-corrosion and protective coatings and linings, and the latter as an authorized applicator of high-performance solutions for safeguarding assets. Together, they have decades of expertise in the most diverse industries, including heat exchangers, tanks, pipelines, and high-voltage insulators, across various environments, from marine areas to refineries, worldwide. As part of an important public project in a waste-to-energy plant with strict requirements in terms of both performance and documentation, the task involved refurbishing and reapplying a protective coating on 6 finned-tube air coolers. The systems were 6 m long, 1 m high, and 0.5 m wide. As they were
used for cooling down fumes at an operating temperature of 140 ° C( 230 ° C Tmax), their surfaces were contaminated with oils and grease, which posed a risk of clogging their finned tubes and, therefore, causing a loss of performance or even plant stoppages. Donelli Alexo was thus required to clean and re-coat them to restore their original functionality and extend their service life. Donelli Alexo started with a chemical cleaning phase of the air coolers to remove oil, grease, and any other contaminants.“ The specific surface preparation process implemented is the result of years of experience and extensive testing with a specialist partner to define the best possible treatment protocol,” pointed out Vanacore. Simultaneously, casings and manifolds underwent dry cleaning with micro glass beads.“ Finally, we applied a protective coating from SÄKAPHEN in 3 layers, performing the necessary intermediate and final polymerization stages to achieve the required dry film thickness( DFT) of 75 µ m.”“ The protective coating chosen for this high-stakes project was Si 14 E, one of our flagship products,” noted Christoph Fischer-Zernin, Commercial Director at SÄKAPHEN.
Conflux Technology has joined the Honeywell-led TheMa4HERA consortium( Thermal Management for Hybrid Electric Regional Aircraft), a Clean Aviation project aimed at developing advanced thermal management systems and architectures for next-generation hybrid-electric regional aircraft, with scaling activities for the short-medium range aircraft. The consortium, comprising 28 partners across 10 European countries, is coordinated from Honeywell’ s international development centre in Brno, Czech Republic. Conflux will apply its thermal management expertise to accelerate the development of innovative, lightweight, additive-manufactured heat exchangers for next-generation aircraft. This includes contributions to multiple projects focused on both Air Cycle Systems( ACS) and Vapour Cycle Systems( VCS) – specifically an air-to-air heat exchanger for ACS, as well as air-to-liquid heat exchangers for VCS evaporator and condenser. Joining TheMa4HERA aligns with Conflux Technology’ s commitment
to delivering high-performance thermal solutions that enable energy-efficient, low-emission aviation,” said Michael Fuller, CEO of Conflux Technology.“ Our additive manufacturing capabilities will help the consortium push the boundaries of thermal management design to meet the demands of hybrid-electric propulsion systems.” The TheMa4HERA project addresses the growing complexity of thermal management in hybrid-electric aircraft, driven by the increasing integration of heat-generating components such as batteries, fuel cells, and power electronics. The initiative will explore and validate advanced thermal architectures and systems to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and meet evolving sustainability regulations. The program targets the advancement of heat exchanger technologies up to Technology Readiness Level( TRL) 5 through component-level development and system testing.
14 Heat Exchanger World October 2025 www. heat-exchanger-world. com