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

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目解决了小剂量配药市场（每年356.3亿美元）未满足的需求。制药、医疗器械、农业和消费品行业都精心策划了刺激感官的浓缩液体混合物，需要以高效、准确和精确的方式输送极少量的浓缩液体，以最大限度地减少材料损失，确保客户满意度，同时最大限度地减少对环境的影响。此外，最终用途的应用，如在家里混合香料和芳香剂或实时在飞行中的营养混合在农业中已经证明了一个特别高的需求。当前的点胶技术不能满足滩头阵地客户的独特需求，因为竞争技术太大、太昂贵，或者无法测量大量可能是高粘性或不透明的流体。这种新方法有望为最终用户带来功能，而目前只有在高度控制的工业环境中才有可能实现。除了与这种弹性细丝测速（EFV）技术的商业化相关的经济影响外，这些新产品还将有助于减轻精准农业对环境的影响，提高分配材料的浓度，从而降低运输和稀释成本。该项目验证了一种精确的流量计，用于测量高浓度材料的小流量，从而实现低容量流体的即时分配，以创建定制的混合物，以满足最终用户的需求。该技术利用EFV，这是一种使用基于应变的传感器的新方法，该传感器通过传感元件的变形来响应流体流动，该传感元件的变形改变了其与流体速度相关的电阻。该概念验证探针可灭菌、高度精确且资源高效，使客户能够在各种粘度范围内精确分配少量流体，吞吐量增加多达20倍，占地面积减少75%，成本降低95%，准确性和精度提高。这些特性直接满足了多个工业领域客户的需求，包括药物分配，科学研究和开发以及制造，最初专注于食品和饮料，香精香料和精准农业的最终用途应用。该研究将通过展示和扩展探测器的技术能力来实现产品市场匹配，从而显著降低技术商业化的风险。该奖项反映了NSF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。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project addresses an unmet need in the small dose dispensing market ($35.63 billion annually). The pharmaceutical, medical device, agriculture, and consumer product sectors all have carefully curated sensory-stimulating mixtures of concentrated liquids and need to deliver extremely small volumes in an efficient, accurate, and precise manner to minimize lost materials and ensure the satisfaction of their customers, while minimizing environmental impacts. Additionally, end-use applications such as in-home mixing of flavors and fragrances or real-time on-the-fly nutrient mixing in agriculture have demonstrated a particularly high need. Current dispensing technologies do not meet the unique needs of beachhead customers as competing technologies are too large, expensive, or unable to measure a wide array of fluids that may be highly viscous or opaque. The new approach promises to bring functionality to end users, that is only currently possible in highly controlled industrial settings. In addition to the economic impacts associated with the commercialization of this elastic filament velocimetry (EFV) technology, these new products will also help to mitigate the environmental impacts of precision agriculture, increasing the concentration of dispensed materials, and thereby reducing transportation and dilution costs. This project validates an accurate and precise flow meter for measuring small flow rates of highly concentrated materials, enabling on-the-fly dispensing of low-volume fluids to create customized mixtures to meet end user needs. The technology utilizes EFV, a novel approach that uses a strain-based sensor that responds to fluid flow by deformation of a sensing element which changes its resistance in relation to fluid velocity. The proof-of-concept probe is sterilizable, highly accurate, and resource-efficient, enabling customers to accurately dispense small volumes of fluids across a broad range of viscosities with up to twenty-fold increase in throughput, 75% footprint reduction, and 95% reduction in cost, with increased accuracy and precision. These properties directly meet the needs of customers in several industrial segments including pharmaceutical dispensing, scientific research and development, and manufacturing, with an initial focus on end-use applications in food and beverage, flavors and fragrances, and precision agriculture. The research will significantly de-risk commercialization of the technology by demonstrating and expanding the technical capabilities of the probe to achieve product-market fit.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.