SBIR/STTR Research Award

Phase Change Thermal Buffers for Environmental Control Unit Efficiency Improvement

Award identifier 033a940a1be5d789551d43c2296d3b4dce2eccaaed8f2e5e0a20479715db66d9Awarding agency Department of Defense · Army

Award amount

$149,921

Program and phase

SBIR · Phase I

Award year

2014

Award details

Awarding agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Army
Recipient company: AQWEST, LLC
Proposal award date: 2014-01-13
Contract end date: 2014-07-12
UEI: GELKYCZTCY69
Solicitation number: 2013.3
Topic code: OSD13-EP1

Research abstract

Aqwest LLC proposes to develop a phase change material (PCM)-based thermal energy storage (TES) to enable"rightsizing"of environmental control units (ECU) and improve overall efficiency through reduced peak loads, more stabilized ECU operation, and off-peak thermal energy storage. The Aqwest TES has a very simple construction and mode of operation while offering major savings in energy consumption. The Aqwest innovative TES concepts for ECU allow for effective thermal coupling between the ECU and the PCM, which translates to>10% in energy use savings. In particular, our innovative PCM packaging and heat spreading concepts we earlier developed for the DOD overcome the low thermal conductivity of PCM materials, thus enabling compact packaging.

Technology keywords

Not reported

Other awards by this recipient

Verified by the same UEI. These are other public SBIR/STTR award pages, not a merged company record.

Awards with the same topic code

Verified by an exact topic code match. This is not a text-similarity match.

Research funding history

43 SBIR/STTR records share this UEI (2008–2025). Reported award amounts total $23,183,592. Reported amounts are not federal obligations.

Phases: Phase I, Phase II

Agencies: Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation

Agency intelligence

Department of Defense

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