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

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）二期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需要精心设计刺激感官的浓缩液体混合物，并且需要以高效、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丢失，确保客户满意，同时最大限度地减少对环境的影响。此外，最终用途应用，如在家庭混合香料和香料或实时在农业中进行营养混合，已经显示出特别高的需求。目前的配药技术无法满足滩头客户的独特需求，因为竞争对手的技术过于庞大、昂贵，或者无法测量各种高粘性或不透明的流体。新方法有望为最终用户带来功能，这目前只可能在高度控制的工业环境中实现。除了与这种弹性纤维速度测量（EFV）技术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，增加分配材料的浓度，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，能够实时分配小体积流体，以创建满足最终用户需求的定制混合物。该技术采用了EFV，这是一种基于应变的传感器，通过传感器元件的变形来响应流体流动，从而改变其与流体速度相关的阻力。概念验证探头具有可灭菌、高精度和资源高效的特点，使客户能够在广泛的粘度范围内准确分配小体积流体，吞吐量提高20倍，占地面积减少75%，成本降低95%，同时提高了准确性和精度。这些特性直接满足了几个工业领域客户的需求，包括药品配药、科学研发和制造，最初的重点是食品和饮料、香料和香料以及精准农业的最终用途应用。该研究将通过展示和扩展探针的技术能力来实现产品市场契合，从而大大降低技术商业化的风险。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。

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.