Dual feed progressive cavity pump extrusion system for functionally graded direct ink write 3D printing
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A multipoint fluid sample collection and distribution system is provided wherein the sample inputs are made through one or more of a number of sampling valves to a progressive cavity pump which is not susceptible to damage by large unfiltered particles. The pump output is through a filter unit that can provide a filtered multipoint sample. An unfiltered multipoint sample is also provided. An effluent sample can be taken and applied to a second progressive cavity pump for pumping to a filter unit that can provide one or more filtered effluent samples. The second pump can also provide an unfiltered effluent sample. Means are provided to periodically back flush each filter unit without shutting off the whole system.
Dewatering of slurries has been successfully accomplished by the proper use of polymers in flocculating the fine particulate matter suspended in mineral processing streams. The U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) entered into a cooperative research effort with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) for the purpose of testing and demonstrating the applicability of mining flocculation technology to dredging activities associated with the removal of sediments from navigable waterways. The Corps has the responsibility for maintaining the navigable waterways in the United States. Current technology relies primarily on dredging operations which excavate the material from the bottom of waterways. The Corps is testing new dredging technology which may reduce resuspension of sediments by the dredging operation. Pilot plant dredging equipment was tested by the Corps which generated larger quantities of water when compared to conventional equipment, such as the clam shell. The transportation of this 'excess' water adds to the cost of sediment removal. The process developed by the USBM consists of feed material from the barge being pumped through a 4-in line by a centrifugal pump and exiting through a 4-in PVC delivery system. A 1,000-gal fiberglass tank was used to mix the polymer concentrate. The polymer was pumped through a 1-in line using a variable speed progressive cavity pump and introduced to the 4-in feed line prior to passing through a 6-in by 2-ft static mixer. The polymer/feed slurry travels to the clarifying tank where the flocculated material settled to the bottom and allowed 'clean' water to exit the overflow. A pilot scale flocculation unit was operated on-site at the Corps' 'Confined Disposal Facility' in Buffalo, NY.
A continuous inline blender was developed to blend polymer slurries with a stream of jet A fuel. The viscosity of the slurries ranged widely. The key element of the blender was a static mixer placed immediately downstream of the slurry injection point. A positive displacement gear pump for jet A was employed, and a progressive cavity rotary screw pump was used for slurry pumping. Turbine flow meters were employed for jet A metering while the slurry flow rate was calibrated against the pressure drop in the injection tube. While using one of the FM-9 variant slurries, a provision was made for a time delay between the addition of slurry and the addition of amine sequentially into the jet A stream.
The progress in the development of a sensor for the detection of trace air constituents to monitor spacecraft air quality is reported. A continuous-wave (cw), external-cavity tunable diode laser centered at 1.55 micrometers is used to pump an optical cavity absorption cell in cw-cavity ringdown spectroscopy (cw-CRDS). Preliminary results are presented that demonstrate the sensitivity, selectivity and reproducibility of this method. Detection limits of 2.0 ppm for CO, 2.5 ppm for CO2, 1.8 ppm for H2O, 19.4 ppb for NH3, 7.9 ppb for HCN and 4.0 ppb for C2H2 are calculated.
We describe theoretically and verify experimentally a simple technique for analyzing conversion efficiency and threshold of ail-resonant intracavity Raman lasers. The method is based on a dependence of the ring-down time of the pump cavity mode on the energy, accumulated in the cavity.
There has been a lot of progress in cesium beam frequency standards in the last few years some of which will be reported here. Optical pumping is being pursued actively in a number of laboratories. Optically slowed and cooled beams have been demonstrated as well as traps for cold neutral atoms. The microwave cavity performance with regard to local phase shift at the beam holes was improved by use of carefully designed and built ring structures for the cavity ends. Work is being done on improvements in electronics with some emphasis on use of digital circuitry and microprocessors. The frequency pulling due to microwave Delta M = +/- 1 transitions (Ramsey pulling) was analyzed and shown to be important. Status of cesium beam frequency standards in some of the laboratories as well as some of the commercial work is discussed. Optical pumping and detection are discussed.
The direct conversion of solar radiation into an inverted population for extraction in an optical cavity holds promise as a relatively simple system design. Broad-band photoabsorption in the visible or near-UV range is required to excite large volumes of gas and to ensure good solar absorption efficiency. The state excited must be a metastable state which is not quenched by the parent gas. The emission bandwidth must be less than approximately 10 A. The system should show chemical reversibility and an insensitivity to increasing temperature. Other properties such as good quantum efficiency and kinetic efficiency are also implied. A search of electronic-vibrational transitions in diatomic molecules satisfying these conditions is now in progress. A photodissociation-pumped atomic iodine laser is now being tested under solar pumping conditions. Photodissociation studies for thallium spin-flip metastable formation will begin in the near future.
High-power solar-pumped lasers could eventually provide power in space for electric and propulsive needs. Recent research results are presented showing progress on both direct-pumped and blackbody-pumped solar lasers. Using a solar simulator, lasing of C3F7I at 10 watts has been achieved. Using C4F9I, lasing thresholds as low as 170 solar constants have been demonstrated, which is the lowest threshold value for a solar-pumped gas laser to date. Blackbody-pumped CO2 lasers have achieved outputs of 180 milliwatts for cavity-pumped and 1.4 watts in transfer-pumped systems.
Work continued on a number of projects aimed at the generation of tunable visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light; and on the control of this light by means of novel mode-locking and modulation techniques. Progress is summarized for the following projects: (1) the transient modelocking of the Nd:YAG laser and application of short optical pulses; (2) studies of the sodium-xenon excimer laser; (3) development of techniques for vacuum ultraviolet holography; and (4) studies of multiple photon pumped xenon and argon excimer lasers.
Recent studies of human Mars missions considered the impacts of an abundant supply of in-situ, accessible water on these mission scenarios. Discovery of exposed water ice scarps in Martian mid-latitudes has bolstered the evidence for massive amounts of almost pure water in buried deposits in regions considered candidates for these future human missions. This paper describes progress towards adapting a long-standing terrestrial technique for accessing and extracting water from these mid-latitude sources of ice. This approach relies on mechanical drills to access the ice through overlying debris. Once the ice layer has been reached, a technique known as a Rodriguez Well, or Rodwell, is used to melt the ice, store the resulting water in a subsurface cavity until needed, and then pump the water to the surface for use. Previous work by the authors utilized a computer simulation to predict the performance of a Martian Rodwell. This simulation was originally developed to predict performance in terrestrial Polar Regions. Whereas the basic approach is appropriate for a similar well on Mars, several parameters had been empirically derived and required experiments simulating the Martian environment to determine the values appropriate for a Martian Rodwell simulation. These experiments have now been completed and preliminary values have been determined for the empirical parameters. Test results are consistent with a dimensionless Sh(Ra) correlation developed by Bower and Saylor (2009) and based on lab tests of water evaporating from a pool into a large air chamber. They are also consistent with correlations derived by Ingersoll (1970) and by Hecht (2002), based on natural-convection heat transfer. Each of these earlier correlations found Sh~Ra1/3, with the 1/3rd power characteristic of large Ra where the boundary layer over the pool surface is turbulent. A somewhat surprising result was that this power-law was found to extend into a range of Ra where laminar flow would be expected. Another surprising result was found in that instead of following established correlations for natural-convection heat transfer over flat plates, the dimensionless heat-transfer rates (Nu) were much larger and approximately independent of Ra. This suggests that mass transfer from the pool enhances convective heat transfer, possibly by enhanced mixing in the boundary layer. Although this possibility has been suggested in the literature, if it is proven to be true under these conditions it could play an important role in the use of a Rodwell on Mars, where evaporative mass transfer is enhanced relative to terrestrial wells.
A highly stable and robust laser system is a key component of the space-based LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission architecture. We describe our progress and plans to demonstrate a TRL (Technology Readiness Level) 5 LISA laser system at Goddard Space Flight Center by 2020. The laser system includes a low-noise oscillator followed by a power fiber amplifier. The oscillator is a low-mass, compact external cavity laser, consisting of a semiconductor laser coupled to an optical cavity, built by the laser vendor Redfern Integrated Optics. The amplifier is a diode-pumped Yb fiber with 2.5 watts output, built at Goddard. We show noise and reliability data for the full laser system, and describe our plans to reach TRL 5.
Steady and unsteady flows for propulsion systems are efficiently simulated by solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The solution method is based on the pseudo compressibility approach and uses an implicit-upwind differencing scheme together with the Gauss-Seidel line relaxation method. Current computations use one equation Baldwin-Barth turbulence model which is derived from a simplified form of the standard kappa - epsilon model equations. The resulting computer code is applied to the flow analysis inside an advanced rocket pump impeller in steadily rotating reference frames. Numerical results are compared with experimental measurements. The effects of exit and shroud cavities with the leak-age flow are investigated. Time-accurate incompressible Navier-Stokes formulation with the overlapped grid scheme capability was evaluated by using MIT flapping foil experiment. The grid dependency, turbulence model effects, and the effect of order of differencing were investigated. Numerical results were compared against experimental data. The resulting procedure were applied to unsteady flapping foil calculations. Two upstream NACA 0025 foils perform high frequency synchronized motion and generate unsteady flow conditions to the downstream larger stationary foil. Comparison between unsteady experimental data and numerical results from two different moving boundary procedures will be presented.
Optical frequency combs have revolutionized precision measurement, time-keeping, and molecular spectroscopy. A substantial effort has developed around "microcombs": integrating comb-generating technologies into compact, reliable photonic platforms. Current approaches for generating these microcombs involve either the electro-optic (EO) or Kerr mechanisms. Despite rapid progress, maintaining high efficiency and wide bandwidth remains challenging. Here, we introduce a new class of microcomb -- an integrated optical frequency comb generator that combines electro-optics and parametric amplification to yield a frequency-modulated optical parametric oscillator (FM-OPO). In stark contrast to EO and Kerr combs, the FM-OPO microcomb does not form pulses but maintains operational simplicity and highly efficient pump power utilization with an output resembling a frequency-modulated laser. We outline the working principles of FM-OPO and demonstrate them by fabricating the complete optical system in thin-film lithium niobate (LNOI). We measure pump to comb internal conversion efficiency exceeding 93% (34% out-coupled) over a nearly flat-top spectral distribution spanning approximately 1,000 modes (approximately 6 THz). Compared to an EO comb, the cavity dispersion rather than loss determines the FM-OPO bandwidth, enabling broadband combs with a smaller RF modulation power. The FM-OPO microcomb, with its robust operational dynamics, high efficiency, and large bandwidth, contributes a new approach to the field of microcombs and promises to herald an era of miniaturized precision measurement, and spectroscopy tools to accelerate advancements in metrology, spectroscopy, telecommunications, sensing, and computing.