Nithin S Panicker
Staff Researcher/Application Engineer CFD
Bio
Dr. Nithin Panicker is a staff member in the Thermal Hydraulics group within the Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Nithin received his PhD (2017) in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University, and his MS (2011) in mechanical engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He is an expert in applying CFD technology to solve challenging industrial/academic problems encountered in energy and manufacturing applications. At ORNL, he leads several High-Performance Computing simulation projects funded through Department of Energy’s High-Performance Computing for Energy Innovation program and through Office of Nuclear Energy program, in collaboration with many industry partners: Alcoa USA, EPRI, Spar systems Inc., CCAM, Solid power inc etc.
He is an advanced user of the CFD codes: StarCCM+, OpenFOAM and ANSYS. Prior to working at ORNL, he worked as a CFD Research Engineer for automotive companies FORD and TENNECO for their water management and exhaust flow applications. He has published his scientific research in many prestigious journals. He is a judge/technical reviewer for many journals (Journal of Fluids Engineering, Journal of Heat Transfer ...) associated with multiphase flow and heat transfer.
At ORNL, he is working on applying CFD in the following areas to improve Energy and manufacturing efficiency:
1. Additive manufacturing
2. Low temperature waste heat recovery
3. Boiling in Nuclear Canisters stored in a geological repository
4. Aluminium smelting process for the production of Aluminium in process industries
5. Waste Heat Recovery Steam Generator used in power plants
He is also involved in developing tools in OpenFOAM for a variety of industrial applications
Education
- PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, 2017
- MS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 2011
- BTech, Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, 2009
Technical skills
- Expert in Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling and simulation of multiphase flows and heat transfer for industrial applications
- Expert in Computational Fluid Dynamics tools used in Industries: StarCCM+, OpenFOAM , ANSYS, GT-Power, SpaceClaim. TRANSAT
- Experienced in solver development using OpenFOAM for various applications
- Experienced in designing multiphase experiments to validate CFD models
- Experienced in programming languages C/C++, JAVA, Python scripting and MATLAB
- Experienced with postprocessing tools: paraview, VISIT and Tecplot
- Experienced in building GUIs using NetBeans java based code
- Experienced in using C++ mpi-libraries for 1D codes
Awards
- Recent Inductee of Marquis Who’s Who in America
- Recipient of ORNL Appreciation
- Recipient of University Graduate Scholarship from University of Cincinnati
- Recipient of American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for Doctoral studies
- Best innovation award Boat modeling contest for Annual Technical Symposium, National Institute of Technology, India
Publications
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FpPHQHcAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nithin_Panicker
Panicker, Nithin, Chudhary, R., Rao, V., Delchini, M., & Jain, P. (2022). A Large Eddy Simulation study of Turbulence, Alumina transport and Heat transfer in Conventional Smelting Cell Using OpenFOAM. Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B, 4, e2205v1. doi:DOI:10.1007/s11663-022-02539-w
Panicker, Nithin, Delchini, M., Sambor, T., & Sabau, A. (2022). A high fidelity cfd study of oxidation in heat recovery steam generator tubes. Applied Thermal Engineering Preprints, 4, e2205v1. doi:DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.14561.38242
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. O. (2020a). Computational study of buoyancy driven turbulence in statistically homogeneous bubbly flows. Chemical Engineering Science, 216, 115546. doi:10.1016/j.ces.2020.115546
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. O. (2020b). Computational study of the effect of homogeneous and heterogeneous bubbly flows on bulk gas–liquid heat transfer. Journal of Fluids Engineering, 142(10). doi:10.1115/1.4047806
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. O. (2018). On the hyperbolicity of the two-fluid model for gas–liquid bubbly flows. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 57, 432–447. doi:10.1016/j.apm.2018.01.011
Panicker, Nithin, Chudhary, R., Rao, V., Delchini, M., & Jain, P. (2021). Computational modeling and simulation of aluminium smelting process using openfoam. In 5th thermal and fluids engineering conference (tfec) (pp. 789–802). doi:10.1615/TFEC2021.mpm.036670
Panicker, Nithin, Delchini, M., Sambor, T., Sabau, A., & Jain, P. (2021). Advanced thermal-hydraulic model of heat recovery steam generators. In 5th thermal and fluids engineering conference (tfec) (pp. 647–656). doi:10.1615/TFEC2021.fip.036547
Mathew, S., Santhosh, B., Panicker, Nithin, Davidson, G., Nicholas, K., Nole, M., . . . Gonzalez, E. (2021). Steady-state and time-dependent coupled simulations of a critical dual-purpose canister in a saturated repository.
Panicker, Nithin, Chaudhary, R., Delchini, M., Rao, V., & Jain, P. K. (2021). Computational fluid dynamics simulations to support efficiency improvements in aluminum smelting process. doi:10.2172/1844874
Panicker, Nithin, Delchini, M., Sambor, T., & Sabau, A. S. (2021). Computational fluid dynamics simulations to predict oxidation in heat recovery steam generator tubes. doi:10.2172/1844874
Panicker, Nithin, Nicholas, K., Mathew, S., & Davidson, G. (2021). Dual purpose canister thermal simulations in sub-cooled regime: Relap vs. cfd comparison.
Pointer, D., Santhosh, B., Delchini, M., Kwitae, C., Panicker, Nithin, & Turckson, B. (2021). Scalable coarse mesh cfd solver for large scale nuclear system simulations.
Presentations
Panicker, Nithin, Chaudhary, R., Delchini, M., Rao, V., & Jain, P. (2022). Large eddy simulation of aluminum smelting process using openFOAM, 7th Thermal Fluids Engineering Conference meeting, las vegas, nevada, may 16-18 2022. Virtual Conference.
Panicker, Nithin, Chaudhary, R., Delchini, M., Rao, V., & Jain, P. (2021). OpenFOAM based modeling and simulation of aluminum smelting process ,16th united states national congress on computational mechanics , 2021. Virtual Conference.
Panicker, Nithin. (2020). Aluminum smelting modeling and simulation, Oak Ridge National Lab CFD day meeting 2020. Virtual Conference.
Panicker, Nithin, Chaudhary, R., Delchini, M., Rao, V., & Jain, P. (2020). Computational modeling and simulation of aluminum smelting process using openFOAM, 5th Thermal Fluids Engineering Conference meeting, 2020. Virtual Conference.
Panicker, Nithin, Delchini, M., Sambor, T., Sabau, A., & Jain, P. (2020). Advanced thermal hydraulic model of heat recovery steam generator, 5th Thermal Fluids Engineering Conference meeting, 2020. Virtual Conference.
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. (2016). Computational study of turbulent bubbly flows, AIChE Annual meeting 2016. doi:https://www.aiche.org/proceedings/people/nithin-s-panicker-3
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. (2014). Analysis and closure verification of multiphase turbulence models for gas -liquid flows, AIChE Annual meeting 2014. doi:https://www.aiche.org/proceedings/people/nithin-s-panicker-3
Panicker, Nithin, Passalacqua, A., & Fox, R. (2013). Meso-scale direct numerical simulations of mono-disperse bubbly flows, AIChE Annual meeting 2013. doi:https://www.aiche.org/proceedings/people/nithin-s-panicker-3
Panicker, Nithin. (2007a). Economical chemical engineering techniques to perform solar water desalination„ Annual Technical symposium Manipal Institute of Technology, 2007. 10 Panicker, Nithin. (2007b). Modeling and simulation of quenching of steel, Annual Technical symposium indian institute of technology, 2007
Reviewer
Powder Technology ] American Institute of Chemical Engineering ] Journal of Fluids Engineering ] Heat Transfer Research ] Journal of Enhanced Heat Transfer ] Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineers ] Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow ] Fluids ] American Nuclear Society
Grants
HPC4EI High Performance Computing to Optimize an Induced Flow Power Generator Device for Waste Heat recovery (funded $300000) ]
Induced Flow Generator System for Waste Heat Recovery from Drying Processes submitted to Energy Efficiency Renewable Energy, Advanced Manufacturing Office, $500, 000 (accepted for first round, review in progress)
INDUCED FLOW GENERATOR SYSTEM FOR LOW-TEMPERATURE WASTE HEAT RECOVERY, EERE, CROSS-SECTOR DECARBONIZATION TECHNOLOGIES (to be submitted)