Patent — available for licensing
Solid-State System Efficiently Generates Purified O2
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center, in collaboration with inno-vators at American Oxygen, have developed a solid-state system and process that separates oxygen from ambient air and compresses the resulting purified oxygen – with a significant reduction in power con-sumption compared to prior state-of-the-art. It is based upon a proven solid oxide electrochemical oxygen separation and compression tech-nique that derives purified oxygen from ambient air and compresses it using an electrochemical pumping method. This electrically driven technology relies upon the high operating tem-perature of electrochemical cell stacks for maximum efficiency. An inverse relationship exists between high temperature and electrical resistance; thus, a heated system requires less energy to drive oxide ions across a cell membrane and compress the resulting purified oxy-gen. Ambient air that is fed and circulated for processing through the system also helps to stabilize high system operating temperatures. To prevent the ambient air from overcooling the electrochemical pro-cess, the incoming air is preheated. However, in existing systems, this pre-heating incurs a large cost penalty in power consumption. The new solid-state system design performs electrochemical reactions to generate purified oxygen but uses an embedded heat exchanger to preheat the incoming air with system waste heat without the need for supplemental heaters, significantly boosting efficiency.