Official Entrant · Vande Bharatam Initiative by Shri Gautam Adani
Deep-Tech · Thermal Systems · Fig. 00

The hubless fan reinventing how the world stays cool.

A patent-pending, design-protected rim-driven cooling fan — no hub, no shaft, no wear — with the potential to cut cooling-energy cost by up to 50%. Engineered for the AI data centres and aircraft of the next decade.

Prototype — Build & Testing Underway Patent Pending · Provisional Filed Jun 2026 Design Registration Filed — 2026 International Roadmap · PCT / Hague
Fig. 01 — The Problem

The AI era is heating up faster than we can cool it.

Every GPU rack, every accelerator, every server blade is throttled by one thing: heat. Yet the fans that cool them have barely changed in decades — a bladed impeller bolted to a central hub, spinning on a bearing that wears out. That legacy design wastes energy in three ways, and every one of them compounds at data-centre scale.

Loss 01

The hub blocks the air

A central hub obstructs up to a quarter of the inlet area — dead space that produces no flow, only drag and turbulence.

Loss 02

Blade tips leak

The gap between spinning blade tips and the casing bleeds pressure, creating vortices, tonal noise, and lost efficiency.

Loss 03

Bearings wear out

Contact bearings degrade under continuous duty, capping fan life and forcing maintenance in always-on facilities.

Fig. 02 — The Breakthrough

We removed the hub. Then the shaft. Then the wear.

01

Hubless open core

The blades are driven from the outer rim inward, leaving the centre completely open. No hub, no shaft, no boss — just clear, unobstructed airflow across the entire aperture.

02

Rim-integrated blades

Each blade is structurally continuous with the surrounding rim, sealing the tip gap that leaks pressure in conventional fans — and quietening the fan at the source.

03

Contactless suspension

A self-acting air-film bearing suspends the rotor with no physical contact — nothing to wear, nothing to lubricate, engineered for continuous-duty life far beyond contact-bearing fans.

Fig. 03 — Engineered Targets

Built to a standard slot. Tuned for a new benchmark.

80mm
Drop-in server-standard envelope — no rack redesign
≥500Pa
Static pressure for dense GPU & accelerator racks
≥45%
Total-to-static efficiency — a step above legacy hubbed fans
70khrs+
Contactless, maintenance-free continuous-duty life
0
Exposed rotating blades — safer, guard-free airflow
Smart
PMBus / I²C telemetry for baseboard-controller integration

▸ A working prototype has been built and is now undergoing bench testing to validate these targets.

The Prize — Energy
~50%

Potential reduction in cooling-energy cost — the compounding prize of eliminating hub blockage, tip-leakage, and bearing drag, multiplied across every rack at data-centre scale.

Fig. 04 — Protected Innovation

Defensible from day one.

The invention is protected on two fronts, filed at the Indian Patent Office and CGPDTM in June 2026 — securing an international priority date, with a clear roadmap to global coverage. Full technical specifications are held confidential.

Utility — Patent Pending

The mechanism

A provisional patent covering the hubless rim-driven architecture, the rim-integrated blade system, and the contactless air-film bearing. Priority secured; complete specification and PCT international filing on the roadmap.

Design — Registration Filed

The form

A registered-design application protecting the distinctive hubless, open-core pinwheel appearance of the article, with a Hague / US / EU international filing window on the roadmap.

Fig. 05 — Roadmap

From research to production — and we're building now.

A clear line from a university thesis to hardware in test, and on to pilots and manufacturing at scale.

2016–18
Research
TU Munich master's thesis — the CFD foundations of the design
Jun 2026
IP Filed
Provisional patent + design registration filed; priority secured
Now
Prototype & Testing
Working prototype built; bench testing underway
Next
Pilot
Field pilots with data-centre & aerospace partners
Scale
Production
Design-for-manufacture and volume deployment
Fig. 06 — Origins

From a master's thesis at TU Munich to a filed patent.

The aerodynamic foundations of this platform were laid during a master's thesis at the Technical University of Munich, in a joint programme with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Computational fluid-dynamics research into the cooling efficiency of axial fans first demonstrated the gains that the hubless rim-driven design now embodies in hardware.

It is the through-line of an aerospace engineer's career — from structural stress analysis on the Airbus A321neo and fluid-dynamics work at Dyson, to a cooling architecture built for the machines that run modern intelligence.

Fig. 07 — Strategic Fit

A perfect fit for where the Adani Group is already building.

This is deep-tech engineered in Gujarat, for the infrastructure India is scaling now — aligning directly with three of the Group's strategic frontiers.

→ 01

Hyperscale data centres

AdaniConneX is building gigawatts of green data-centre capacity across India. Cooling is among the largest energy loads in any facility — a more efficient fan directly lowers PUE, energy cost, and carbon, reinforcing the Group's net-zero commitments.

→ 02

Defence & aerospace

The same contactless, wear-free, high-pressure architecture is tailor-made for avionics and aerospace thermal management — a natural adjacency to Adani Defence & Aerospace, where reliability and weight are decisive.

→ 03

Semiconductors & Make in India

As India builds indigenous chip and electronics capability, high-performance cooling is a strategic import today. This platform is an Atmanirbhar answer — designed, protected, and buildable at home.

Fig. 08 — The Platform

One core technology. Many mission-critical markets.

The hubless rim-driven core is a platform, not a single product. Wherever heat, reliability, and space collide, it applies.

Aerospace

Avionics cooling

Contactless bearings and enclosed blades mean no wear and no foreign-object hazard — critical for airborne electronics where a failed fan is a grounded aircraft.

Data centre

AI & GPU racks

High static pressure in a standard 80 mm slot, with smart telemetry — a drop-in upgrade for the densest compute on earth.

Edge & telecom

Sealed, remote sites

Maintenance-free life suits unattended edge nodes, 5G radios, and industrial cabinets where a service call is expensive.

Power electronics

EV & energy systems

Compact, efficient forced convection for inverters, chargers, and battery systems across the electrification stack.

Partner with us

Let's cool what comes next — together.

For partnership, pilot, and investment enquiries on the hubless rim-driven cooling platform.

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