SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Modern aircraft turbojet and turbofan engines have an auxiliary gearbox that is integral to the engine design. The gearbox vents to the atmosphere to allow pressure to equalize and maintain the engine seals. In order to minimize oil loss, an air-oil separator (also called a deoiler shown in Figure 1), is used to help recover oil from the air oil mist before it exhausts to the atmosphere. Current technology hasn’t changed and is based around designs that don’t perform well at all engine operation conditions. ERG’s Duocel® foam separation media improves separation efficiency by between 500 times better, and up to 2000 times better at max operating conditions. Duocel® also outperforms conventional technology at all operating conditions. Using an F-22 as an example, Duocel® could save ~$638,000 in oil costs per aircraft based on oil loss limits, separation efficiency, service life, and cost of oil. With 187 F-22’s produced, the savings could be as high as $120 million. Using the same logic and a production number of ~500 F-35’s, the savings could be as high as $313 million. An additional benefit of implementing Duocel® into current engines is reduction of oil emissions. Using the conservative performance increase of 500x and the service life of a single F-22, that translates to only 3.2 gallons of oil exhausted to the environment compared to 1,600 gallons with conventional AOS technology.
