NASA SBIR 2014 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
American Energy Technologies Company
220 West Campus Ct, Unit D
Arlington Heights, IL 60004 - 1479
(847) 414-6788

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Igor V Barsukov
IBarsukov@usaenergytech.com
220 W Campus Ct, Unit D
Arlington Heights, IL 60004 - 1479
(847) 414-6788

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Igor V. Barsukov
IBarsukov@usaenergytech.com
3825 Lizette Ln
Glenview, IL 60026 - 1218
(847) 414-6788

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 3
End: 5

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Power Electronics and Management, and Energy Storage 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)
This Phase I SBIR project seeks to develop a 500 Wh/kg Lithium primary battery for intended application as the primary power source on landers and probes for future missions to Titan/Enceladus and near Earth asteroids. The proposed battery technology aims to offer a viable alternative to Li/SO2 primary batteries which were used in the most recent mission to Titan. A thorough analysis of power requirements for the Huygens-Cassini mission (2005 landing) will be undertaken from the point of view of identifying engineering areas where the benefits of introduction of a more potent battery could be realized. Developers will focus on the engineering and performance testing of two distinctly different cell designs in a 32650 cylindrical cell housing. An integral part of the new battery will be a system of smart electrical heaters which, at a fraction of available battery power, will turn resistive heaters on and off as required to compensate for heat losses through the battery box wall (the assumption of the model being studied is that the battery should not require the use of external radioactive heating sources to maintain operation). This project will see the introduction of several new materials which will be manufactured by the contractor for purposes of boosting the energy efficiency of the proposed battery system.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The proposed development of an ultra-high energy density, inherently safe and highly efficient advanced battery system is geared towards benefiting several groups of applications within NASA. They include next generation safe batteries for power systems on lunar rovers, ascent systems, EVA suits, re-entry vehicles, etc. Non-Government space programs (i.e. commercial space exploration) will also likely use the battery platform in order to replace banks of lithium-ion batteries on reentry vehicles.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Down-to-earth applications for this technology include: medical batteries; power sources for remote unmanned sensors; batteries for Army missions; consumer electronics; and in the PC computer world: CMOS backup battery; high-end computer redundant array of independent disks (RAID) disk controllers, etc.