October 2023 - Physical Sciences Inc.

Press Release

Imperia Batteries^®, a division of Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), has been awarded a contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division to develop low-temperature, high performance primary and secondary lithium ion batteries.

Low energy density and poor energy retention of commercial batteries at extreme low temperatures limits the warfighter’s effectiveness during missions in the arctic, at high altitudes, or in space. This capability gap must be addressed to improve mission capabilities in these regions. In order to address this capability gap, Imperia Batteries proposes to prototype and deliver primary (non-rechargeable) and secondary (rechargeable) high performance batteries optimized for extreme cold operation. These batteries will be enabled by a previously developed composite separator that has been demonstrated to improve the energy delivered at -40 °C by >3x over conventional technologies. This improvement in ability to deliver energy at cold temperatures will be paired with Imperia’s high energy density cell designs which have >25% (secondary) and >95% (primary) higher energy density than commercial 18650 cells. By both increasing the energy density baseline and improving the ability to deliver energy at low temperatures, Imperia’s low temperature battery solutions will outperform commercial solutions by >3x.

For more information contact:

Dr. Christopher Lang
Vice President, Energy Enterprises
lang@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the Department of Energy to develop an innovative and commercially viable approach for producing metal-organic frameworks via a continuous, energy-efficient process enabled by emergent green reaction technologies.

Metal-organic frameworks are a class of polymeric material with high internal surface areas, resulting in considerable interest for gas storage and separations applications. These porous materials are typically only made on a laboratory scale via conventional heating methods, where synthetic processes oftentimes involve long reaction times, high temperatures, and low yields. The utilization of metal-organic frameworks as sorbent media creates a need for more efficient, larger scale manufacturing processes than the current state of the art practices.

PSI’s process will produce sorbent materials through a continuous, energy-efficient process enabled by emergent green reaction technologies. The utilization of this process to produce sorbent materials will create new business opportunities by integrating it into a value-chain of industrial and/or commercial processes that generate xenon and krypton. PSI’s innovation is a two-step process that produces and purifies sorbent materials with direct application to the recovery of radioactive, gaseous materials that result from nuclear power generation.

PSI’s approach will demonstrate a rapid, economically viable process to produce metal-organic frameworks for gas adsorption applications. Additionally, the process can be utilized for the scalable production of other metal-organic frameworks and materials.

For more information contact:

Dr. Dorin Preda
Area Manager, Materials
dpreda@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Space Force to develop lightweight, high temperature syntactic foam shielding to protect from rocket plume-surface interactions during vertical takeoffs and landings.

Vertical landing of space systems presents a number of challenges. While landing rockets on flat surfaces has been achieved by multiple groups, landing on irregular surfaces still proves challenging on a number of fronts. Among these challenges is the plume kicking up dust and debris leading to both mechanical and chemical damage and erosion of the rocket. The issue of plume-surface interactions remains a strategic knowledge gap according to NASA.

The Advanced Composite Structures group at PSI has developed a high temperature syntactic foam that can be co-processed alongside other materials systems such as our C/SiC CMC’s and other SiC-matrix materials systems. The syntactic foam is composed of low cost, aluminosilicate cenospheres recovered from fly ash waste products in a SiC matrix to form a closed cell foam with a low density (<1.8 g/cc), reasonable mechanical strength (~30MPa), and very low thermal conductivity less than 1 W/m-K [3], [4]. The cenospheres provide the foam’s closed-cell structure while the SiC matrix is formed using a polycarbosilane (PCS) pre-ceramic polymer (PCP). This high temperature, ceramic foam will serve as shielding for the rockets, protecting them from surface ejecta impacts and erosion as well as molten regolith interactions and chemical degradation.

For more information contact:

Mr. George Rodgers
Vice President, Advanced Composites
grodgers@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the United States Space Force. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.