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

SBIR 第二阶段：开发用于小容量点胶的工业流量计

• 批准号: 2322302
• 负责人: Yuyang Fan
• 金额: $ 99.96万
• 依托单位: TENDO TECHNOLOGIES INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-11-15 至 2025-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2322302&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Development; industrial

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.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目解决了小剂量分配市场的未满足需求（每年356.3亿美元）。药品，医疗设备，农业和消费产品部门都精心策划了浓缩液体的感觉混合物，并需要以有效，准确，准确的精确方式提供极少的体积，以最大程度地减少损失的材料并确保对客户的满意度，同时使环境影响最小。此外，最终使用的应用，例如香水和香水的内部混合或农业中的实时营养混合，已经表现出特别高的需求。当前的分配技术无法满足Beachhead客户的独特需求，因为竞争技术太大，昂贵，或者无法测量可能是高度粘性或不透明的多种流体。新方法有望将功能带给最终用户，这仅在高度控制的工业环境中才有可能。除了与这种弹性丝元素（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确农业的环境影响，从而增加分配材料的浓度，从而降低运输和稀释成本。该项目验证了准确，精确的流量计，用于测量高浓缩材料的较小流速，从而可以在线分配少量流体，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是一种新颖的方法，它使用基于应变的传感器，该传感器通过变形的传感元件来响应流体流，该传感元件会改变其与流体速度相关的电阻。概念验证探测器是可消毒的，高度准确且资源效率的，使客户能够准确地分配少量的液体，这些流体在广泛的粘度范围内，吞吐量增加了2倍，减少了75％的吞吐量，减少了95％的成本，而成本降低了95％，并且具有准确的和精确的。这些物业直接满足了几个工业领域的客户需求，包括药品分配，科学研究和开发以及制造业，最初着重于食品和饮料，口味和香水的最终用途应用以及精密农业。这项研究将通过证明和扩大调查的技术能力以实现产品市场拟合的技术能力来大大降低技术的商业化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评估来评估值得支持的。