SBIR Phase I: Development of an industrial flow meter for low-volume dispensing

SBIR 第一阶段：开发用于小容量点胶的工业流量计

• 批准号: 2129550
• 负责人: Yuyang Fan
• 金额: $ 25.6万
• 依托单位: TENDO TECHNOLOGIES INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2023-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2129550&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Development; industrial; flow

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will create a new way to deliver certain fluids, such as intravenous drugs. Small dose dispensing ($35.63 billion annual global market) is a vital activity across many different industries including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer products (e.g. flavors & fragrances). Firms in these sectors are creating highly valuable concentrated liquids and need to deliver extremely small volumes in an efficient, accurate, and precise manner to minimize lost materials and ensure the safety of their customers and integrity of their product. Current dispensing technologies create a bottleneck in the manufacturing process by inhibiting parallel dispensing, or are too costly to justify the value they provide. This project advances a sterilizable, highly accurate, and resource-efficient solution to deliver small amounts of many types of fluids with up to 20-fold increase in throughput, 75% footprint reduction, and 95% reduction in cost without compromising accuracy or precision. These properties directly meet the needs in several industry segments such as pharmaceutical dispensing, scientific research, and manufacturing. The intellectual merit of this project is to advance a method of elastic filament velocimetry (EFV), which utilizes a strain-based sensor to measure the velocity of fluid passing over a free-standing, electrically-conductive nanoscale ribbon. Drag from the passing flow deflects the nanoribbon and induces an axial strain and a change in the resistance that is directly related to flow. The small dimensions of the sensing element result in viscously-dominated drag force, enabling sensitivity to both liquids and gases. Most commercial strain-based sensors utilize calibrated cantilevers or plates embedded with strain gauges on one or more surfaces before the entire member is calibrated to the fluid velocity. The current approach combines the calibrated member and strain gauge into a single unit, eliminating the most complicated and expensive aspects of previous designs. The project will further enhance this technology by exploring more accessible nanoribbon materials, quantifying sensor drift over time, characterizing response to differing fluid properties, and define operating parameters by exposing the sensor to non-ideal conditions. At the conclusion of the project, the sensors will have defined calibration and operating parameters and will be suitable for use with a wide array of fluids, including injectables.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将创造一种输送某些液体（如静脉注射药物）的新方法。小剂量配药（每年全球市场价值356.3亿美元）是许多不同行业的重要活动，包括制药、医疗器械和消费品（如香料）。这些行业的公司正在生产高价值的浓缩液体，需要以高效、准确和精确的方式交付极少量的液体，以最大限度地减少材料损失，并确保客户的安全和产品的完整性。当前的点胶技术通过抑制平行点胶而在制造过程中造成瓶颈，或者过于昂贵而无法证明其提供的价值。该项目提出了一种可消毒、高精度、资源高效的解决方案，可以提供少量多种类型的流体，在不影响准确性和精度的情况下，吞吐量提高20倍，占地面积减少75%，成本降低95%。这些特性直接满足了制药配药、科研和制造等几个行业领域的需求。该项目的智力优势在于提出了一种弹性细丝测速（EFV）方法，该方法利用基于应变的传感器来测量流体通过独立的导电纳米带的速度。经过气流的阻力使纳米带偏转，引起轴向应变和与流动直接相关的阻力变化。传感元件的小尺寸产生了以粘性为主的阻力，从而对液体和气体都具有灵敏度。大多数商用应变传感器在将整个元件校准到流体速度之前，使用在一个或多个表面上嵌入应变片的校准悬臂梁或板。目前的方法是将校准的构件和应变计结合到一个单元中，消除了以前设计中最复杂和最昂贵的方面。该项目将通过探索更容易获得的纳米带材料，量化传感器随时间的漂移，表征对不同流体性质的响应，并通过将传感器暴露在非理想条件下来定义操作参数，进一步增强该技术。在项目结束时，传感器将定义校准和操作参数，并将适用于各种流体，包括注射流体。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。