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

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.