SPARK THERMIONICS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A19-133
SPARK THERMIONICS, INC. — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $167,455
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A19-133
- Solicitation
- 19.2
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- 2019-10-30 → 2020-08-20
Description
We propose to develop highly efficient, compact thermal systems to enable high-performance solid-state energy conversion based on thermionics. Thermionic energy converters have the potential to leapfrog competing small-scale generation in power density and efficiency, but have been largely neglected for decades. These advantages of thermionics enable us to build fuel-flexible miniature generators with more than 6 W output weighing 1 lbs or less, with minimal-service lifetimes in excess of 5000 hours. In order to build a fully contained generator system which uses the thermionic power module Spark is developing, we propose the following tasks: 1) solve balance-of-plant for miniature generator, and 2) (Option) power conversion & ignition. These tasks will de-risk the two main challenges we anticipate during generator integration and scaling the generator design to the size and weight constraints.