Case Study: Intellectual Ventures achieves a working, high-efficiency micro-channel heat-exchanger prototype with COMSOL Multiphysics

Simulation-based engineering design helped generate a fi rst physical prototype of a micro-channel heat exchanger that worked largely as expected

Intellectual Ventures, through its Intellectual Ventures Laboratory, set out to develop a novel micro-channel counter-current regenerative heat exchanger (RHX) but faced limited prior engineering knowledge for micro-scale RHXs and challenges around thermal performance, pressure drop, structural stability, materials selection, and prototyping. To address these multidisciplinary design and R&D challenges, the team relied on Comsol’s COMSOL Multiphysics software as the primary simulation and analysis tool.

Using Comsol, the IVL team coupled thermal, fluid, and structural simulations and incorporated analytic reductions to speed models and guide prototyping choices, reducing design iterations and enabling integrated hardware development. The result was a first physical prototype that performed largely as predicted—ramping water from room temperature to about 130 °C under pressure and returning to ambient with close to 98% regenerative energy recapture—demonstrating a compact, very low‑energy thermal treatment device and rapid validation of the concept.

Intellectual Ventures

Ozgur E. Yildirim

Engineering Program Manager