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A new, energy-efficient air chilling system could keep troops on the front lines cool while using about half as much diesel as current systems. The system’s decreased fuel consumption could also save lives by reducing attacks on American soldiers who deliver fuel to field operations.
The Department of Energy (DOE)’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will receive up to $2.8 million over three years to develop the system, the Department of Defense, Navy, and DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced Wednesday. PNNL’s project was among five awarded a total of $8.5 million to improve the efficiency of battlefield heating and air conditioning systems by 20 to 50%.
“PNNL is looking forward to adapting its ongoing research into advanced, energy-efficient cooling technologies and apply it toward important military needs,” says PNNL Laboratory Fellow and project leader Pete McGrail. “Our team has a strong emotional connection to the success of this project, as it could help prevent American soldiers from being injured or killed while moving fuel in dangerous supply convoys around the battlefield.”
PNNL is partnering with Oregon State University and Power Partners Inc. of Athens, Ga., on the project.
PNNL’s system will be a next-generation adsorption chiller that is specially designed to be smaller, lighter, more efficient, and operate under the extreme temperatures experienced at bases on the frontlines, also called forward operations. The chiller will use a novel nanomaterial called a metal organic framework, or MOF. MOFs are crystal-like compounds made of metal clusters connected to organic molecules, or linkers. Together, the clusters and linkers assemble into porous 3D structures. PNNL developed a MOF that can hold up to three times more water than the silica gel used in today’s adsorption chillers. This helps make PNNL’s test adsorption chiller system much smaller and lighter. This project will build on advances in adsorption cooling technology PNNL has already made under ARPA-E’s Building Energy Efficiency Through Innovative Thermodevices, or BEET-IT, program.
Further improvements for this project will include breakthroughs in microchannel heat exchanger technology and improvements in the MOF’s thermal properties. Both advances will help reduce the size and weight of the chiller further and squeeze out more cooling efficiency.
“This will be the most advanced adsorption cooling system ever developed, and these advances are needed to meet very demanding military requirements,” McGrail says.
PNNL’s military system will run off of waste heat coming from a diesel generator. This could reduce the diesel fuel use needed to cool field military installations by up to 50%. The planned 3-kW unit will weigh about 180 pounds and take up about 8 cubic feet.
