NASA SBIR 2012 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Lynntech, Inc.
2501 Earl Rudder Freeway South
College Station, TX 77845 - 6023
(979) 764-2218

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Mahesh Waje
mahesh.waje@lynntech.com
2501 Earl Rudder Freeway South
College Station, TX 77845 - 6023
(979) 764-2200

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
G. Renee Hisaw
renee.hisaw@lynntech.com
2501 Earl Rudder Freeway South
College Station, TX 77845 - 6023
(979) 764-2218

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 4

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
In-Situ Resource Utilization is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
In situ production of methane as propellant and oxygen as life support consumables from the atmospheric CO2 and water on Mars is a key enabling technology required for sustainable and affordable human exploration of Mars. Sabatier reaction for catalytic methanation of CO2 with H2 is a commercially well known process achieving conversions in excess of 99% at temperature of ~350?C. However, application of this technology for Mars missions requires significant improvements in terms of mass and durability of the Sabatier reactor. Conventional catalytic approaches are insufficient to address the catalyst durability issues and its tolerance to impurities such as H2S and halogenated compounds, which may be present in small quantities in Martian CO2. Lynntech proposes a novel low power, low temperature, impurity tolerant non thermal plasma assisted catalysis for the methanation of CO2. Lynntech will develop a multi-channel reactor design based on parametric study in Phase I. The Phase II of the project will build a full scale Sabatier reactor for NASA application.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Lynntech's non thermal plasma assisted Sabatier reactor technology provides an energy efficient, low temperature and durable product for the generation of methane from CO2 for following NASA applications: (1) Propellant production on Mars from the Martian CO2, (2) Atmospheric revitalization of the cabin environment for utilization of CO2 in the cabin.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The Sabatier technology can be used for CO2 sequestration or as an intermediate processing technique for fuel or chemical production in the commercial market. The primary and sub-markets for Lynntech's Sabatier technology are as follows: (1) CO2 sequestration with SNG formation for a number of areas including power plants and petrochemical industry. (2) CO removal (specific methanation) technology for purification of reformate or hydrogen streams from fuel reformation. (3) Reformation processes such as dry reforming of methane with CO2. The plasma assisted catalytic reactor design has several applications in following areas: (1) Gas purification (such as impurity removal from biogas, natural gas, LPG, etc.), (2) Diesel exhaust gas purification for NOx and SOx abatement, (3) Fuel reformation for hydrogen generation and (4) Sluggish catalytic reactions requiring high activation energies.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Fuels/Propellants In Situ Manufacturing Resource Extraction