Mike Nowak, customer proposal manager at Weldun International, Ltd. (Bridgman, MI), has been named co-inventor on a U.S. patent for a recuperator cell assembly system that is said to overcome common problems associated with manufacturing recuperators for gas turbine engines.

The system that Nowak and a team of engineers created is designed to allow manufacturers to economically produce the air cells used in a recuperator’s core with a process that ensures a repeatable procedure.

Many gas turbine engines use a recuperator, or heat exchanger, to increase engine operating efficiency by extracting heat from the exhaust gas and preheating the combustion air.