SBIR Phase I: High Efficiency Near Isothermal Rotary Compressor for Improved Efficiency in Industrial Manufacturing

这项小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在进一步开发用于工业压缩空气应用的突破性压缩技术。我们开发了一种创新的混合转子几何结构，可以产生极高的功率密度，并且可以使用专有的液体注入系统，在气体被压缩时直接冷却，从而实现接近等温的压缩。与传统压缩技术相比，这种组合可以使效率提高30%以上，压缩比也提高了一个数量级。这项工作的主要目标是验证该技术在工业压缩空气应用中的适用性，并构建和测试全尺寸原型以验证性能模型。该项目的成功完成将导致一种产品的商业化，该产品将为工业压缩空气系统的性能提供一个阶段性的变化。这个项目的广泛影响/商业潜力是广泛的。工业用户的用电量约占美国总用电量的三分之一，即每年约一万亿千瓦时。压缩空气的生产消耗了所有工业用电量的10%，即每年大约1000亿千瓦时，在某些过程密集型工业中，这一比例高达20%。本提案中正在研究的技术有可能将空气压缩机的效率提高30%以上。将这些节省与其他系统级改进相结合，可以将运行压缩空气系统所需的功率降低两倍。随着节能的巨大潜力，压缩机也有一个巨大的市场，2007年全球空气和气体压缩机的出货量接近100亿美元。2009年，仅在美国，用于工业空气应用的新压缩机就价值6亿美元。效率更高的压缩机有可能占据这一市场的很大份额。最后，该技术还可以应用于其他压缩和涡轮机械，影响深远，具有巨大的商业潜力。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to further develop a breakthrough compression technology for industrial compressed air applications. We have developed an innovative hybrid-rotor geometry which leads to extremely high power density and enables the use of a proprietary liquid injection system that can directly cool the gas as it is compressed, leading to near isothermal compression. This combination can result in an increase of over 30% in efficiency and an order of magnitude higher compression ratio than is achievable with conventional compression technology. The key objectives of this effort are to verify the technology's applicability in industrial compressed air applications and build and test a full-scale prototype to validate performance models. The successful completion of this project will lead to the commercialization of a product that will provide a step-change in the performance of industrial compressed air systems. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is widespread. Industrial users are responsible for approximately one-third of all power consumption in the US, or around one trillion kilowatt-hours per year. Ten percent of all industrial power use, or roughly 100 billion kilowatt-hours per year, is consumed in the production of compressed air, with that percentage going as high as 20% in certain process-intensive industries. The technology being investigated in this proposal has the potential to improve the efficiency of air compressors by over 30%. Combining these savings with other system-level improvements could reduce the power required to run compressed air systems by a factor of two. Along with the dramatic potential for energy savings, there is also an enormous market for compressors, with 2007 worldwide shipments of air and gas compressors approaching $10 billion. New compressors used in industrial air applications were worth $600 million in the US alone in 2009. A higher efficiency compressor has the potential to capture a large share of this market. Finally, this technology could also be applied for other compression and turbomachinery applications, with far-reaching impact and enormous commercial potential.