The Fuel Flexibility for Contingency Operations program comprises basic and applied research to support naval needs for operational energy resilience and sustained operations when conventional fuels are not abundantly available. This program seeks technological breakthroughs to enable the generation of synthetic fuels from abundant and logistically compatible resources. Investments support the development of technologies that enable the efficient utilization of non-traditional fuels and blends in combustion devices, fuel cells and hybrid power-generation systems. The program also seeks to develop an understanding of the effect of nontraditional fuels and blends on the design, performance and durability of power systems.
Research Concentration Areas
On-demand production of energy-dense fuels from abundant resources, including hydrogen (H2) from seawater and hydrocarbons from captured feedstocks
Technologies enabling the storage, conversion, and utilization of nontraditional fuels/blends, including scalable reforming and cracking approaches
Fuel-flexible and impurity-tolerant fuel cells
Combustion science for efficiency and fuel-flexibility.
Research Challenges and Opportunities
Development and validation of scalable thermochemical and electrochemical reaction pathways for generating hydrogen (H2) and liquid hydrocarbon fuels
Modeling and simulation of reaction pathways, technology scaling and use-case scenarios
Design of catalysts, catalyst/support architectures, multifunctional electrodes, and membranes that ease transport and kinetics bottlenecks in fuels synthesis/conversion
Development of experimental and theoretical tools to understand the combustion characteristics of alternative fuels and to predict blending interactions
Modeling to evaluate the performance of naval power and propulsion systems that operate on alternative fuels.
How to Submit
For detailed application and submission information for this research topic, please refer to our broad agency announcement (BAA) No. N0001425SB001.
Contracts: All white papers and full proposals for contracts must be submitted through the ONR Submission Portal; instructions are included in the BAA.
Grants: All white papers for grants must be submitted through the ONR Submission Portal, and full proposals for grants must be submitted through grants.gov; instructions are included in the BAA.