PARAGON SPACE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SOCOM163-004

Description

Paragon and SunDanzer are teaming to develop and mature a multi-drawer freezer and cold storage system for environments having unreliable power availability that a) harnesses passive, unpowered thermal control technologies derived from Paragons aerospace experience and b) active thermal control with a refrigeration loop design developed by Sundanzer for solar powered operation. The passive/active hybrid aspect of this design is optimized by sizing passive and active systems through rigorous analysis for the best technical solution. Our solution emphasizes phase change material (PCM) heat storage, high performance insulation and passive, user controllable heat transport with the goal of operating during any unpowered period without the need for battery powered operation of the refrigeration loop. When primary power is available, the refrigeration loop charges and keeps the PCM material frozen. This solution avoids the many drawbacks of high energy density battery storage, replacint a potentially volatile or caustic component with non-toxic, non-flamable, damage tolerant water based PCM. Our process will rigorously develop the system proposed through requirements development and review, thermodynamic analysis and thermal analysis, conceptual detailed design, and will validate the completed design through analysis.