SBIR-STTR Award

A vibration-free, long-lived refrigerator is desired to produce cooling for spacecraft sensors in the 65-80 K range. A chemical oxygen compressor and Joule-Thomson expansion is an appealing way to provide such cooling, but chemical compressors are limited by a low oxygen content of current materials, e.g., PrCdO with 1.5 weight-percent of oxygen. The goal of this project is to formulate long-life materials with the correct physical and chemical properties to compress oxygen. A large surface areas for both the unoxidized and oxidized materials is the critical physical property; whereas, the most important chemical property is good reversibility of the oxidation process.The chief improvements expected are an order of magnitude increase in the weight-percent of oxygen over PrCdO and a lower maximum operating temperature. Phase I will investigate of the sorption thermodynamics and kinetics of candidate oxygen storage materials to determine their operating parameters. Construction and testing of a working oxygen compressor would occur in Phase II.

Potential Commercial Applications:
Safe, high density solid state oxygen storage materials and sorption refrigeration devices could have both terrestrial and aerospace applications.STATUS: Phase I Only