COMPANY PROFILE

 Heat Transfer Research & Development, Ltd. (HTRD), was established in 1986 with two missions: development of energy conservation techniques through high heat transfer and exploration of solutions to hotspots in many sophisticated hi-tech systems, such as computers, where high localized cooling is required.

HTRD has been dedicated to achieving the first mission by providing technical assistance to small and medium sized companies, including comprehensive process consulting from analytical work through to prototype building and verification.  For the second mission, HTRD has developed numerous solid-state heat pumps to supply domestic and international users.

 Beginning in 1995, however, HTRD has faced an era of new technical challenges for increased energy conservation.  Global warming was identified as being caused by the increased concentration of green house gas (GHG: carbon dioxide gas) in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels which are major sources of energy and negatively impact on the environment.   In recent years, the world-wide demand for fossil energies has increased dramatically, particularly as newly developing large countries such as China, India, etc. are emerging as big energy users.  Thus, HTRD has been focusing on the increased energy efficiency in all energy systems including solid-state cooling/power generating systems.

 A milestone accomplishment of HTRD in these new challenges was the first commercial Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) power generator of 2.7 MW power output installed in Korea in 2005, which used waste heat discharging from the kiln of a cement manufacturing factory.  The waste heat used to be dissipated into atmosphere, but now the ORC generator has been contributing to the improved plant efficiency and saving fuel cost by recycling the waste heat and also reducing the GHG accordingly.  HTRD was the coordinator for a joint project between a Korean construction company and a US technology company, Barber-Nichols, Inc. located in Colorado. A few other projects similar to this are expected to start in 2011. 

 HTRD has been making steady progress in the development of the solid-state cooling and power generation systems with the cooperative efforts with the former Soviet countries and has been distributing to global customers.  Not only in systems, HTRD has been supplying key components such as thermoelectric modules and heat sinks, which are key components to the development of the solid state heat pumps and generators.  Our major clients for our high end thermoelectric modules include the major players in micro-device manufacturing.  We also have unique heat sink designs for various applications. On top of these existing capabilities, we supply a new breed of super high performance cold plates and heat sinks developed by Ecologence, LLC.  In the Korea territory, HTRD is an exclusive distributor.  This will enhance our capabilities for meeting the cooling requirements for key sub-systems such as servers, thermal heads and others that require localized high cooling

 Yong N. Lee, Ph.D., is the founder of Heat Transfer Research & Development, Ltd..  He has attained over forty years of industrial and academic experience. Dr. Lee received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Seoul National University in Korea and had postgraduate study at Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow, Scotland and received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois-Urbana. Previously, he was employed at the Borg-Warner Research Center in Des Plaines, Illinois for nearly twenty years, mainly involved in compact heat exchanger development. Dr. Lee has published numerous professional papers in the heat transfer field, including on thermoelectric heat pumps, and holds twenty eight U.S. and foreign patents in the field.