The Department of Thermal Energy Engineering relies on the major of Thermal Energy Engineering, which is the second level discipline under the first level key discipline Power Engineering and Engineering Thermophysics in Hunan Province. The undergraduate major Energy and Power Engineering is rated as the national first-class undergraduate major. Its predecessor was the metallurgical furnace teaching and research section of Metallurgical Engineering Discipline in 1950s, developed into Metallurgical Furnace Discipline in 1960s, and merged with thermal engineering teaching and research section of Mechanical Discipline into the Thermal Energy Engineering Discipline in 1980s. So far, it has a history of more than 60 years, which is responsible for the teaching tasks of engineering fluid mechanics, heat transfer, engineering thermodynamics, combustion principle and technology, energy technology economics, energy and power technology progress, industrial furnace, thermal material foundation, heat exchanger design, energy and power engineering foundation and professional experiment, etc.

The department is mainly engaged in personnel training, basic scientific research and research on new energy-saving technologies, new processes and new products in the fields of efficient and clean energy utilization and conversion. Over the past 60 years, it has cultivated a large number of outstanding talents for the national energy, non-ferrous metals and related fields, made a series of important scientific achievements, and made contributions to national scientific and economic development. The main research areas include whole system simulation and visualization of thermal process, energy-saving technology of process industry, new technology of efficient and clean industrial furnace, new energy-saving materials, theory and method of industrial energy-saving evaluation, etc. In recent years, the department made good progress in the basic research of droplet impact and phase change heat transfer in spray cooling process, new composite surface enhanced phase change heat transfer mechanism, Marangoni convection mass transfer characteristics of two layers of fluid in magnetic field, multiphase reaction flow transmission mechanism and strengthening mechanism. The department also made significant breakthroughs in the research and application of key technologies for high-quality utilization of waste materials, energy-saving technology of new anode group and special-shaped cathode in aluminum electrolysis, high-efficiency and clean bath smelting process and technology, new formula and compound modifier of phosphorus pig iron for aluminum electrolysis, and the large scale prebaked aluminum reduction cell in the non-homogeneous model, etc. The department has successively undertaken more than 10 national projects, including national "973 Plan" project, Key Projects of National High Tech Research and Development Plan (863 plan), Science and Technology Support Plan, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Author Special Funding Project of Ministry of Education, etc., and has worked with Aluminum Corporation of China, Datang Electric Power Group, China Electric Power Investment Co., Ltd., China Minmetals Group, Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group, Dongying Nonferrous Metals Co., Ltd., Hunan Valin Iron and Steel Group, Chongqing Energy Group and other large domestic enterprises to conduct more than 50 school-enterprise cooperation projects. The research achievements include 2 second prize of National Science and Technology Progress, 5 first prize and more than 10 second prize of Provincial and Ministerial Science and Technology Progress. More than 650 papers has been published on high-level academic journals at home and abroad and more than 60 invention patents have been authorized.