Contraflow Vortex Air Precleaner

To address the Army need for a zero-maintenance air filtration system for diesel engines of tactical military vehicles that eliminates all particles above 7 microns with service life increased by >65%, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop the new Contraflow Vortex Air Precleaner (CVAP) technology. This proposed technology is based on synchronous rotation of coaxial counter-directed vortices that centrifugally move dust particles to the external vortex and flush them out. The device will perform better than 99.5% air cleaning, with the capability to adjust the clean air flow according to the dust content in the inlet air. CVAP is compact—only a short time of axial flight is sufficient for dust extraction because of the fast acceleration of dust particles (~30 ms for 1-micron particles; bigger particles are removed even faster), lightweight, and low in production cost. It will have a long lifetime because of the absence of any moving parts. In Phase I POC will design, build, and demonstrate the proof-of-concept CVAP prototype. In Phase II POC plans to develop, build, and demonstrate the performance of the CVAP prototype with a Detroit Diesel 6V53T engine.