An Advanced Distillation Oxygen System for Aircraft Oxygen Supply Systems

Current military aircraft oxygen supply systems are suboptimal in that they require a great deal of logistical support, do not provide sufficient oxygen purity level for all applications, do not respond well to varying levels of demand, are coupled directly to the engine bleed air supply, and/or present significant hazards to ground and flight personnel. The opportunity presented here is to eliminate these problems by developing an onboard advanced distillation oxygen system (ADOS) consisting of a cryogenic refrigerator and a compact, lightweight, flight-worthy distillation column which will provide a supply of liquid oxygen to one or more standard aircraft LOX dewars. The cryogenic refrigerator portion of the proposed system will be based directly on one of two systems currently under development by Creare for the AF as components of advanced hybrid oxygen systems (AHOS), which employ molecular sieve oxygen generators. The primary focus in the proposed project is the development of a lightweight, compact, flight-worthy distillation column capable of producing highly pure oxygen. The Phase I program will consist of a detailed design study, which will specify the optimal thermodynamic cycle, and a preliminary design of the distillation column. To justify further development, the ADOS will be evaluated against the AHOS currently under development and other existing aircraft oxygen systems.