{"project":{"acronym":"","projectId":93368,"title":"An Affordable Autonomous Hydrogen Flame Detection System for Rocket Propulsion","primaryTaxonomyNodes":[{"taxonomyNodeId":10903,"taxonomyRootId":8816,"parentNodeId":10901,"level":3,"code":"TX13.2.2","title":"Propulsion, Exhaust, and Propellant Management","definition":"Propulsion, exhaust, and propellant management provides commodity loading, rocket engine acoustic energy abatement, and propellant servicing capabilities to increase safety of operations.","exampleTechnologies":"Hyperspectral Imaging for Cryogenic/Toxic/Non-Hazardous Fluids Leak, Fire Detection and Mitigation including propellant fire/flame detection, advanced techniques to scale up to a launch pad or engine test stand environment, Detonation/Conflagration effects, modular flame trench, Universal Propellant Servicing System, Small Robots for Repairs and Mitigation Actions, Automated Umbilicals, rocket exhaust capture and filtration","hasChildren":false,"hasInteriorContent":true}],"startTrl":3,"currentTrl":4,"endTrl":4,"benefits":"This technology has near term direct application for monitoring hydrogen fires within several NASA propulsion test and launch facilities. This capability will enhance the safety of these facilities and potentially facilitate required maintenance procedures. NASA rocket motor testing centers that would benefit from this include SSC, MSFC, GRC-PBS and WSTF. KSC, responsible for the SLS and Orion launches that continue human spaceflight within NASA, and the Launch Services Program that provides launch operations oversight at several locations including Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Vandenberg AFB would also realize safety and maintenance benefits from this technology. NASA is currently conducting experiments on flame interaction and extinguishment on-board the ISS. Fire burns differently in microgravity and although our technology is optimized for hydrogen flame phenomenology, it has wider potential use in NASA's cool flame research portfolio and could, for example, be used to support follow-on Saffire and FLEX experiments. FLEX experiments have shown low-frequency flicker that our temporal algorithms could exploit for terrestrial fire detection and discrimination.
Government facilities managed by the Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office, including Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), Redstone Test Center (RTC), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) as well as commercial facilities including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Orbital ATK could all enhance their safety and facilitate their maintenance efforts by employing this technology to monitor hydrogen and other flames. There are several established markets and applications that incorporate significant amounts of hydrogen gas in their processes that would benefit from our flame detection technology. These markets primarily include petrochemical facilities, heat treating facilities for aerospace and automotive applications, fuel cell production facilities, and potentially thermonuclear power plants. An emerging application is hydrogen station monitoring. With the advent of fuel cell powered vehicles, hydrogen stations will be required along roadways and at people's homes as a way of storing and refilling hydrogen fuel cells. Another potential application is auto race car monitoring. There have been a number of horrific events involving either race car drivers or pit crew members engulfed by alcohol flames, detectable with our technology. These flames are difficult to detect and extinguish because, like hydrogen, they are essentially invisible to the eye.","description":"NASA has long used liquid hydrogen as a fuel and plans to continue using it in association with their advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology. Hydrogen fire detection is critical for rocket propulsion safety and maintenance. A significant fire at a rocket test or launch facility could be catastrophic to infrastructure or even worse, to human life. Detection monitoring is problematic as hydrogen flames can be nearly invisible during the day. Non-imaging, non-visible fire detection technology has limited range and can suffer from false alarms from sources outside the region of interest. Low-cost visible imagers, commonly used for wide-scale routine surveillance, have limited utility detecting hydrogen fires. Although it has been known for decades that multispectral imaging outside the visible range can be used to detect fires with low false alarm rates, the price of such systems and the lack of processing algorithms and the ability to implement them in real-time has largely prohibited their use. During this project we will develop a low-cost imaging capability that fuses data collected from sensors operating in the (1) solar blind ultra-violet, (2) thermal infrared and (3) visible spectrum, using advanced spectral, spatial and temporal processing techniques optimized to detect and generate alerts associated with hydrogen fires in real-time. This multi-sensor, multi-processing approach will enable us to automate flame detection with extremely low false alarm rates. In addition to control room alerts, we will make use of the wireless communication capabilities found within smart phones and other mobile devices to build an App to alert key decision makers and first responders of a fire detected in real-time. This multi-sensor imaging research could also support NASA's important cool flame microgravity research occurring on the International Space Station.","startYear":2017,"startMonth":6,"endYear":2017,"endMonth":12,"statusDescription":"Completed","principalInvestigators":[{"contactId":318506,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Mary","lastName":"Pagnutti","fullName":"Mary A Pagnutti","fullNameInverted":"Pagnutti, Mary A","middleInitial":"A","primaryEmail":"mpagnutti@i2rcorp.com","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"programDirectors":[{"contactId":206378,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Jason","lastName":"Kessler","fullName":"Jason L Kessler","fullNameInverted":"Kessler, Jason L","middleInitial":"L","primaryEmail":"jason.l.kessler@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"programExecutives":[{"contactId":215154,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Jennifer","lastName":"Gustetic","fullName":"Jennifer L Gustetic","fullNameInverted":"Gustetic, Jennifer L","middleInitial":"L","primaryEmail":"jennifer.l.gustetic@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"programManagers":[{"contactId":62051,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Carlos","lastName":"Torrez","fullName":"Carlos Torrez","fullNameInverted":"Torrez, Carlos","primaryEmail":"carlos.torrez@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"projectManagers":[{"contactId":3164610,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Mark","lastName":"Turowski","fullName":"Mark Turowski","fullNameInverted":"Turowski, Mark","primaryEmail":"Mark.P.Turowski@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false},{"contactId":461333,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Theresa","lastName":"Stanley","fullName":"Theresa M Stanley","fullNameInverted":"Stanley, Theresa M","middleInitial":"M","primaryEmail":"theresa.m.stanley@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"website":"","libraryItems":[{"file":{"fileExtension":"pdf","fileId":300856,"fileName":"SBIR_2017_1_BC_H10.01-9546","fileSize":283738,"objectId":297396,"objectType":{"lkuCodeId":889,"code":"LIBRARY_ITEMS","description":"Library Items","lkuCodeTypeId":182,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"OBJECT_TYPE","description":"Object Type"}},"objectTypeId":889,"fileSizeString":"277.1 KB"},"files":[{"fileExtension":"pdf","fileId":300856,"fileName":"SBIR_2017_1_BC_H10.01-9546","fileSize":283738,"objectId":297396,"objectType":{"lkuCodeId":889,"code":"LIBRARY_ITEMS","description":"Library Items","lkuCodeTypeId":182,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"OBJECT_TYPE","description":"Object Type"}},"objectTypeId":889,"fileSizeString":"277.1 KB"}],"id":297396,"title":"Briefing Chart","description":"An Affordable Autonomous Hydrogen Flame Detection System for Rocket Propulsion, Phase I Briefing Chart","libraryItemTypeId":1222,"projectId":93368,"primary":false,"publishedDateString":"","contentType":{"lkuCodeId":1222,"code":"DOCUMENT","description":"Document","lkuCodeTypeId":341,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"LIBRARY_ITEM_TYPE","description":"Library Item Type"}}},{"caption":"An Affordable Autonomous Hydrogen Flame Detection System for Rocket Propulsion, Phase I Briefing Chart Image","file":{"fileExtension":"png","fileId":292052,"fileName":"SBIR_2017_1_BC_H10.01-9546","fileSize":288598,"objectId":288567,"objectType":{"lkuCodeId":889,"code":"LIBRARY_ITEMS","description":"Library Items","lkuCodeTypeId":182,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"OBJECT_TYPE","description":"Object Type"}},"objectTypeId":889,"fileSizeString":"281.8 KB"},"files":[{"fileExtension":"png","fileId":292052,"fileName":"SBIR_2017_1_BC_H10.01-9546","fileSize":288598,"objectId":288567,"objectType":{"lkuCodeId":889,"code":"LIBRARY_ITEMS","description":"Library Items","lkuCodeTypeId":182,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"OBJECT_TYPE","description":"Object Type"}},"objectTypeId":889,"fileSizeString":"281.8 KB"}],"id":288567,"title":"Briefing Chart Image","description":"An Affordable Autonomous Hydrogen Flame Detection System for Rocket Propulsion, Phase I Briefing Chart Image","libraryItemTypeId":1095,"projectId":93368,"primary":true,"publishedDateString":"","contentType":{"lkuCodeId":1095,"code":"IMAGE","description":"Image","lkuCodeTypeId":341,"lkuCodeType":{"codeType":"LIBRARY_ITEM_TYPE","description":"Library Item Type"}}}],"transitions":[{"transitionId":69419,"projectId":93368,"partner":"Other","transitionDate":"2018-04-01","path":"Advanced To","relatedProjectId":101838,"relatedProject":{"acronym":"","projectId":101838,"title":"An Affordable Autonomous Hydrogen Flame Detection System for Rocket Propulsion","startTrl":4,"currentTrl":7,"endTrl":7,"benefits":"This technology has near term direct application for monitoring hydrogen fires within several NASA propulsion test and launch facilities. This capability will enhance the safety of these facilities and potentially facilitate required maintenance procedures. NASA rocket motor testing centers that would benefit from this include SSC, MSFC, GRCPBS and WSTF. KSC, responsible for the SLS and Orion launches that continue human spaceflight within NASA, and the Launch Services Program that provides launch operations oversight at several locations including Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Vandenberg AFB would also realize safety and maintenance benefits from this technology. NASA is currently conducting experiments on flame interaction and extinguishment onboard the ISS. Fire burns differently in microgravity and although our technology is optimized for hydrogen flame phenomenology, it has wider potential use in NASA's cool flame research portfolio and could, for example, be used to support follow-on Saffire and FLEX experiments. FLEX experiments have shown low-frequency flicker that our temporal algorithms could exploit for terrestrial fire detection and discrimination.
Government facilities managed by the Rocket Propulsion Test Program Office, including Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), Redstone Test Center (RTC), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) as well as commercial facilities including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Orbital ATK could all enhance their safety and facilitate their maintenance efforts by employing this technology to monitor hydrogen and other flames. There are several established markets and applications that incorporate significant amounts of hydrogen gas in their processes that would benefit from our flame detection technology. These markets primarily include petrochemical facilities, heat treating facilities for aerospace and automotive applications, fuel cell production facilities, food processing facilities (for hydrogenation) and potentially thermonuclear power plants. An emerging application is hydrogen fuel cell fueling station monitoring. With the advent of fuel cell powered vehicles, hydrogen fueling stations will be required along roadways as a way of refilling fuel cells. These fueling stations are required by law to include hydrogen flame sensing technology.","description":"NASA has long used liquid hydrogen as a fuel and plans to continue using it in association with their advanced nuclear thermal propulsion technology. Hydrogen fire detection is critical for rocket propulsion safety and maintenance. A significant fire at a rocket test or launch facility could be catastrophic to infrastructure or even worse, to human life. Detection monitoring is problematic as hydrogen flames can be nearly invisible during the day. Non-imaging, Non-visible fire detection technology has limited range and can suffer from false alarms from sources outside the region of interest. Low-cost visible imagers, commonly used for wide-scale routine surveillance, have limited utility detecting hydrogen fires. Although it has been known for decades that multispectral imaging outside the visible range can be used to detect fires with low false alarm rates, the price of such systems and the lack of processing algorithms and ability to implement them in real-time has largely prohibited their use. During this project we will develop a low-cost imaging capability that fuses data collected from sensors operating in the (1) solar blind ultra-violet, (2) thermal infrared, (3) mid-wave infrared, and (4) visible spectrum, using advanced spectral, spatial and temporal processing techniques optimized to detect and generate alerts associated with hydrogen fires in real-time. This multi-sensor, multi-processing approach will enable us to automate flame detection with extremely low false alarm rates. This multisensory imaging research could also support NASA's important cool flame microgravity research occurring on the International Space Station.","startYear":2018,"startMonth":4,"endYear":2020,"endMonth":10,"statusDescription":"Completed","website":"","program":{"acronym":"SBIR/STTR","active":true,"description":"
The NASA SBIR and STTR programs fund the research, development, and demonstration of innovative technologies that fulfill NASA needs as described in the annual Solicitations and have significant potential for successful commercialization. If you are a small business concern (SBC) with 500 or fewer employees or a non-profit RI such as a university or a research laboratory with ties to an SBC, then NASA encourages you to learn more about the SBIR and STTR programs as a potential source of seed funding for the development of your innovations.
The SBIR and STTR programs have 3 phases:
The SBIR and STTR Phase I contracts last for 6 months with a maximum funding of $125,000, and Phase II contracts last for 24 months with a maximum funding of $750,000 - $1.5 million.
Opportunity for Continued Technology Development Post-Phase II:
The NASA SBIR/STTR Program currently has in place two initiatives for supporting its small business partners past the basic Phase I and Phase II elements of the program that emphasize opportunities for commercialization. Specifically, the NASA SBIR/STTR Program has the Phase II Enhancement (Phase II-E) and Phase II eXpanded (Phase II-X) contract options.
Please review the links below to obtain more information on the SBIR/STTR programs.
Provides an overview of the SBIR and STTR programs as implemented by NASA
Provides access to the annual SBIR/STTR Solicitations containing detailed information on the program eligibility requirements, proposal instructions and research topics and subtopics
Schedule and links for the SBIR/STTR solicitations and selection announcements
Federal and non-Federal sources of assistance for small business
Search our complete archive of awarded project abstracts to learn about what NASA has funded
Still have questions? Visit the program FAQs
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The SBIR and STTR programs have 3 phases:
The SBIR and STTR Phase I contracts last for 6 months with a maximum funding of $125,000, and Phase II contracts last for 24 months with a maximum funding of $750,000 - $1.5 million.
Opportunity for Continued Technology Development Post-Phase II:
The NASA SBIR/STTR Program currently has in place two initiatives for supporting its small business partners past the basic Phase I and Phase II elements of the program that emphasize opportunities for commercialization. Specifically, the NASA SBIR/STTR Program has the Phase II Enhancement (Phase II-E) and Phase II eXpanded (Phase II-X) contract options.
Please review the links below to obtain more information on the SBIR/STTR programs.
Provides an overview of the SBIR and STTR programs as implemented by NASA
Provides access to the annual SBIR/STTR Solicitations containing detailed information on the program eligibility requirements, proposal instructions and research topics and subtopics
Schedule and links for the SBIR/STTR solicitations and selection announcements
Federal and non-Federal sources of assistance for small business
Search our complete archive of awarded project abstracts to learn about what NASA has funded
Still have questions? Visit the program FAQs
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