Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Screw Conveyor”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

13 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1981

Fluidized bed coal combustion reactor

A fluidized bed coal reactor includes a combination nozzle-injector ash-removal unit formed by a grid of closely spaced open channels, each containing a worm screw conveyor, which function as continuous ash removal troughs. A pressurized air-coal mixture is introduced below the unit and is injected through the elongated nozzles formed by the spaces between the channels. The ash build-up in the troughs protects the worm screw conveyors as does the cooling action of the injected mixture. The ash layer and the pressure from the injectors support a fluidized flame combustion zone above the grid which heats water in boiler tubes disposed within and/or above the combustion zone and/or within the walls of the reactor.

Moynihan, P. I.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Flexible Mechanical Conveyors for Regolith Extraction and Transport

A report describes flexible mechanical conveying systems for transporting fine cohesive regolith under microgravity and vacuum conditions. They are totally enclosed, virtually dust-free, and can include enough flexibility in the conveying path to enable an expanded range of extraction and transport scenarios, including nonlinear drill-holes and excavation of enlarged subsurface openings without large entry holes. The design of the conveyors is a modification of conventional screw conveyors such that the central screw-shaft and the outer housing or conveyingtube have a degree of bending flexibility, allowing the conveyors to become nonlinear conveying systems that can convey around gentle bends. The central flexible shaft is similar to those used in common tools like a weed whacker, consisting of multiple layers of tightly wound wires around a central wire core. Utilization of compliant components (screw blade or outer wall) increases the robustness of the conveying, allowing an occasional oversized particle to pass hough the conveyor without causing a jam or stoppage

Walton, Otis R.↗
NASA NTRS2023

Move That Goo!

On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard became the first American in space (K. Mars); since then, NASA has made leaps and bounds in space exploration and continues to develop new technologies. Through their X-Hab program, NASA has teamed up with the National Space Grant Foundation to fund our student-centered project with one main goal: Move That Goo! Liquid amine absorption is a method by which CO2 is removed from an environment and is intended to be the primary method for CO2 removal for NASA’s sustained human presence on extraterrestrial bodies such as the Moon and Mars. Liquid amines can be highly viscous when absorbing CO2, thus the team needed to produce a design that could move a high viscosity fluid while staying under the power requirement of 1 kW and allowing a few square meters in a closed system. Prompted by NASA and with the support of our faculty mentors, we have been tasked with the research, development, production, and testing of a system able to move a high viscosity liquid amine which requires adequate air exposure to absorb carbon dioxide from a habitat atmosphere in low gravity. The system is split into two main groups, fluids, and materials, with two separate teams of students assigned to their half of the design. The fluids team is responsible for everything in the design that directly touches the fluid. The materials team is responsible for the test stand to which the fluids team’s design is attached to as well as additive manufacturing material selection. In the first semester, the team focused on brainstorming ideas, design selection, budget creation, and CAD modeling. Multiple concepts were generated but the team decided on a design to get the high viscosity fluid to move around a rectangular channel using a screw conveyor mechanism. The liquid must be moved by the turning screw from the thermal chamber going around a rectangular trough back to the thermal chamber. The screw and the trough geometry will be important to allow for the high viscosity fluid to flow, utilizing surface tension to maintain contact to the trough as seen in Figure 1 below.

Olivia Angst↗
DOE OSTI2022

BDEM (Discrete-element-simulator for high-solids granular flows) [SWR-22-72]

BDEM is a discrete element method based simulation tool developed specifically for modeling high-solids granular flows that include polydispersity, heat-transfer, moving boundaries and chemistry. Our solver provides facilities for simulating spherical/non-spherical particles with modified contact and friction models in complex dynamic geometries defined using level-sets or triangulated files. The solver is developed on top of NREL's open-source performance portable library, AMReX, providing parallel execution capabilities on current and upcoming high-performance-computing (HPC) architectures. Simulations at the scale of several millions to billion particles have been performed using this software on large scale computing resources. This software can be applied to non-reacting solids dominant flows in silos, hoppers and screw conveyors as well as in high temperature reacting systems such as screw kilns and auger reactors.

Sitaraman, Hariswaran↗
DOE OSTI2025

Particle Handling in Particle-Based Pumped Thermal Energy Storage

A particle-based pumped thermal electricity storage system stores high-temperature heat (~1000 degrees C) in low-cost silica sand and generates power through an efficient power cycle. Central to this system is a counterflow direct-contact gas/particle fluidized-bed heat exchanger, which can significantly improve the heat exchange process due to the large heat transfer surface area of particles. To showcase a lab-scale 10- to 20-kWe heat exchange process with particles heating up to 300 degrees C, a comprehensive hydrodynamic analysis of the fluidization condition inside the heat exchanger was conducted. The heat exchanger was designed to target for heat exchange process of 10-20 kW and accommodate an air mass flow rate of 0.3-0.7 kg/s. The fluidization condition was set to maintain stable bubbling fluidization, thereby maximizing the particle-to-air heat transfer. An air distributor was designed to equally distribute air over the bed, which can avoid defluidized zones in the heat exchanger. Additionally, particle handling systems including L-valves, screw conveyors, and pneumatic conveyors were developed for the prototype heat exchanger, efficiently conveying high-temperature particles at 0.2-0.5 kg/s. This work lays the foundation for scaling up the system and integrating it into larger energy storage applications, demonstrating its potential for efficient, high-temperature thermal energy storage and power generation.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Design of a Biomass Scale Cubical Triaxial Tester

The bioenergy industry is dependent on predictable and reliable feedstock handling equipment. High profile failures in the industry demonstrate the need for better modeling tools for feedstock handling, specifically tools which can model the bulk flow of biomass feedstock materials in handling equipment such as hoppers or screw conveyors. Measurement of bulk material flow characteristics is a critical component to inform modeling tools. Following examples in the soils and pharmaceuticals industries, a Cubical Triaxial Tester (CTT) was selected as a critical component to study relationships between applied stress on a bulk sample and the resulting strain on the bulk material. In cooperation with The Pennsylvania State University, Forest Concepts designed a CTT specifically to measure bulk biomass flowability characteristics. Several mechanical design constraints were identified to ensure proper scaling and repeatability. Major design constraints included sample chamber size versus particle length, volumetric strain sensing accuracy, independent axial pressure control, and sample chamber handling. This report explains how major design constraints were determined.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
NASA NTRS2021

Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) Breadboard Testing and Model Validation

In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite(LCROSS) provided definitive proof of water in the Lunar’s southern permanently shadowed region (PSR)[1]. Both the 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy[2] and the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) team identified capability gaps in icy regolith transfer and reactor processing in Permanently Shadowed Region(PSR) environmental conditions. A screw conveyor dryer system operating from inside the PSR can continuously process water (and volatiles) for both breathable air and propellant. NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) began development of a similar sub-system for Mars operation in 2017 and fabricated a unique breadboard test stand for validating the feasibility of this concept. This testing was postponed with the redirection of NASA’s mission from Mars to Moon. A JSC led trade study[3] in FY20 formulated a plan to leverage existing hardware to test concept feasibility, developed a lunar auger dryer sizing tool, and identified that both a physical flow and thermal model is required to develop an Engineering Development Unit (EDU) for environmental testing. Beginning in FY21, the Game Changing Development Program (GCDP) funded a three-year technology development project to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) subsystem to TRL 5.

Lunar↗
NASA NTRS2021

Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) Breadboard Testing and Model Validation

In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite(LCROSS) provided definitive proof of water in the Lunar’s southern permanently shadowed region (PSR)[1]. Both the 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy[2] and the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) team identified capability gaps in icy regolith transfer and reactor processing in Permanently Shadowed Region(PSR) environmental conditions. A screw conveyor dryer system operating from inside the PSR can continuously process water (and volatiles) for both breathable air and propellant. NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) began development of a similar sub-system for Mars operation in 2017 and fabricated a unique breadboard test stand for validating the feasibility of this concept. This testing was postponed with the redirection of NASA’s mission from Mars to Moon. A JSC led trade study[3] in FY20 formulated a plan to leverage existing hardware to test concept feasibility, developed a lunar auger dryer sizing tool, and identified that both a physical flow and thermal model is required to develop an Engineering Development Unit (EDU) for environmental testing. Beginning in FY21, the Game Changing Development Program (GCDP) funded a three-year technology development project to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) subsystem to TRL 5.

Lunar↗
DOE OSTI2023

Biomass Feedstock Flow Modeling at Exascale

Variable biomass feedstock handling in hoppers and screw conveyors can cause upstream failures and disrupt downstream conversion operations. Understanding how particle size, shape, and moisture content affect feedstock flowability is important for efficient biorefinery operation. We present the use of our open-source discrete element method (DEM) solver for predicting flows in large scale hoppers and assess its performance on state-of-the-art high performance computing platforms that use heterogenous computing architectures.

bioenergy↗
NASA NTRS2017

Extraction of Volatiles from Regolith or Soil on Mars, the Moon, and Asteroids

NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems ISRU Technology Project is evaluating concepts to extract water from all resource types Near-term objectives: Produce high-fidelity mass, power, and volume estimates for mining and processing systems Identify critical challenges for development focus Begin demonstration of component and subsystem technologies in relevant environment Several processor types: Closed processors either partially or completely sealed during processing Open air processors operates at Mars ambient conditions In-situ processors Extract product directly without excavation of raw resource Design features Elimination of sweep gas reduces dust particles in water condensate Pressure maintained by height of soil in hopper Model developed to evaluate key design parameters Geometry: conveyor diameter, screw diameter, shaft diameter, flight spacing and pitch Operational: screw speed vs. screw length (residence time) Thermal: Heat flux, heat transfer to soil Testing to demonstrate feasibility and performance Agglomeration, clogging Pressure rise forced flow to condenser.

Extration↗
NASA NTRS2022

Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) Mechanical Testing and Supporting Models

In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) provided definitive proof of water in the Lunar’s southern permanently shadowed region (PSR). Both the 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy and the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) team identified capability gaps in icy regolith transfer and reactor processing in Permanently Shad-owed Region (PSR) environmental conditions. A water processing plant operating from inside the PSR can continuously process water (and volatiles) for both breathable air and propellant. NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) began development of the primary sub-system for a Mars plant in 2017 and fabricated a unique breadboard test stand for validating the feasibility of this concept. This testing was postponed with the redirection of NASA’s mission from Mars to Moon. A JSC led trade study in FY20 formulated a plan to leverage existing hardware to test concept feasibility, developed a lunar auger dryer sizing tool, and identified that both physical flow and thermal models are required to develop an Engineering Development Unit (EDU) for environmental testing. Beginning in FY21, the Game Changing Development Program (GCDP) funded a three-year technology development project to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) subsystem to TRL 5.

Lunar↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lunar Water Extraction Via Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI)

In 2009, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) provided definitive proof of water in the Lunar’s southern permanently shadowed region (PSR)1. Both the 2020 NASA Technology Taxonomy2 and the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII) team identified capability gaps in icy regolith transfer and reactor processing in Permanently Shadowed Region (PSR) environmental conditions. A water processing plant operating inside the PSR can continuously process water (and volatiles) for both breathable air and propellant. NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) fabricated a unique breadboard test stand for validating the feasibility of this concept,developed a lunar auger dryer sizing tool, and identified the physical flow and thermal models required to design an Engineering Development Unit (EDU) for environmental testing. Over the two years this project was active, models were developed including: a) a sizing tool that scales the auger parameters based on production targets, b) accurate thermal models in both lab and lunar conditions, c) a Discreet Element Model (DEM) for observing particle effects in low-g, and d) incorporated these subsystem models into a MATLAB parametric Modular Open System Approach (MOSA) system model. These models were validated by testing the auger in both a mechanical and thermal system configuration. The results of this testing increased the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the Lunar Auger Dryer ISRU (LADI) system to TRL 4.

Lunar↗