Mumbai, February 2014: It was perhaps the world's biggest gathering of designers, engineering consultants, manufacturers, buyers, processors and EPC Companies. The agenda was to explore newer and innovative solutions to make Heat Exchangers more energy efficient. In a rare gesture of solidarity, 89 companies of India representing all key stakeholders were brought together by Heat Transfer Research Inc (HTRI) at the HTRI-CC India meetings held at Mumbai and Delhi. The purpose of these meetings was to highlight the need to conserve energy through optimized, application-oriented and well-coordinated heat exchanger designs by bringing all the major players on a single platform. HTRI is an industrial research and development consortium (based in Texas, USA) serves the thermal process engineering needs of more than 1,400 corporate member sites world-wide for over 50 years.

The gathering discussed the current challenges being faced by the segment. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Haresh K. Sippy, Chairman and Managing Director, TEMA India Ltd, as the oldest HTRI Member - said, "The coming years and decades will see reduced availability of crude oil and hence Indian companies need to upgrade ideas and standards to meet global requirements and resultantly help conserve environment." He further stressed on the fact that it is necessary for the EPC companies, the manufacturer and the end-users to be on the same platform to understand the heat exchanger and its problems better. "Heat Exchangers are to be tailor-made as per the end-user's requirements and not merely as specifications and datasheets. After all, the wealth of information comes only from the end-users. Though heat exchanger is a mystery, it can be solved with the better coordination with the end-user since conceptualization. If that data is shared with manufacturers - through EPC Companies - it would be easy to nail this obscurity", he concluded. TEMA India Ltd. is among the global leaders in manufacturing of Heat Exchangers and one of the major users of HTRI technology in India.

HTRI CC-India (Communication Committee) is a formal "Users' Forum" and it provides a non-business platform to collect feedback on various aspects related to HTRI technology and its usage. This forum regularly discusses the current relevant matters and sends feedback to HTRI - which gets documented and suggestions implemented for the future development.

On the technical side of the discussions, 19 presentations, covering varied aspects on thermal, process & mechanical engineering, showcased the recent trends and future requirements. There were two panel discussions when experts from the industry interacted with the participants opining on various queries. All the feed-back received during the brainstorming on various aspects covering life-cycle of various Heat Exchangers has been sent to HTRI headquarters at Texas, USA.

HTRI (Heat Transfer Research, Inc) is a unique industrial research and development consortium, founded in 1962 and stationed at Texas, USA - which serves the thermal process engineering needs of more than 1,400 corporate member sites world-wide. HTRI has greatly increased its presence in India during last 10 years encompassing all the four Industry sectors - i.e., Engineering Consultants, EPC Companies, Equipment Manufacturers and Processing Companies. Currently, India has the second highest number of HTRI memberships globally - next only to the USA.