SBIR Phase I: CAS: Advanced Thermal Oxidizer to Cost-effectively Control Greenhouse Emissions from Small Sources

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在减少空气污染，特别是温室气体甲烷，有毒/致癌有机化合物和气味的排放。通过改善人类健康、福祉和环境，减少这些排放符合公众利益，并符合NSF的使命，即促进可造福社会的未经验证的创新技术。这些减排将通过开发一种新型的空气污染控制技术来实现，这种技术可以成本有效地应用于使用现有技术无法有效控制的小型排放源。这些小型排放源数量众多，在某些情况下，位于敏感或负担过重的社区附近，因此排放控制将产生很大的影响。该技术的成本效益提高和简单性应该会降低日益严格的监管合规成本，释放人力和资本资源用于其他领域的生产性使用。该SBIR项目将支持&可燃气体空气污染控制技术的研究和开发（R D），该技术使用一种新颖的、正在申请专利的、连续热再生系统，以能够在热氧化器中重新使用热能。这项工作将侧重于研究本发明的基本传热、流体动力学和材料科学，以及全尺寸原型的构建和测试，以提高耐用性并降低性能风险。这种连续的、再生的热氧化器系统不同于任何现有的污染控制技术，并且与传统技术相比，将能够显著减小尺寸和复杂性。该系统将大规模生产，不像现有的系统是定制的。减小的尺寸、降低的复杂性和大规模生产的组合应该导致成本的大幅降低。新系统还具有其他优点，如减少预热时间，应用更灵活，更安全。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 I project seeks to reduce air pollution, specifically emissions of the greenhouse gas methane, toxic/carcinogenic organic compounds, and odors. Reduction in these emissions serves the public interest by improving human health, well-being, and the environment and is in alignment with NSF’s mission to promote innovative unproven technologies that can benefit society. These emission reductions will be accomplished through the development of a new type of air pollution control technology that can be cost-effectively applied to small emission sources that cannot be effectively controlled using existing technologies. These small emission sources are numerous, and in some cases, located near sensitive or overburdened communities, so the emissions control will have a large impact. The improved cost effectiveness and simplicity of this technology should reduce increasingly more stringent regulatory compliance costs, freeing up both human and capital resources for productive use in other areas.This SBIR project will support research and development (R&D) into an air pollution control technology for combustible gases that uses a novel, patent-pending, continuous heat regeneration system to enable re-use of thermal energy in a thermal oxidizer. The effort will focus on investigating the fundamental heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and material science of the invention as well as construction and testing of full-scale prototypes to increase the durability and reduce the performance risk. This continuous, regenerative, thermal oxidizer system is unlike any existing pollution control technology and will enable a significant reduction in size and complexity compared to conventional technologies. The system will be mass-produced, unlike existing systems that are custom built. The combination of reduced size, reduced complexity, and mass-production should result in a large reduction in cost. The new system has other advantages such as reduced warm-up time, greater flexibility in applications, and greater safety.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.