SSC research helps MRIs, fuel-cells

Could NASA research at Stennis Space Center help hospital MRI machines and fuel-cell cars of the future? Perhaps. Engineers are testing an innovative technology that could yield new sources of both expensive helium gas required for cooling MRI machines and purified, high-pressure hydrogen gas, the fuel for fuel-cells. SSC, which tests rocket engines in South Mississippi, produces a large quantity of hydrogen and helium gas mixture in its rocket tests which right now is just burned or vented into the air. But using Sustainable Innovations' electrochemical Hydrogen Recovery System (HRS), NASA will be able to extract hydrogen from rocket fuel line purge gas, leaving behind high-value helium, a purified stream compressed to commercial storage pressure. And with helium's price only expected to rise as global supplies plateau, the helium extraction technology will become more and more valuable to NASA in the coming years and provide a possible revenue stream. Sustainable Innovations, of East Hartford, Conn., developed HRS for NASA under a Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer program. The same technology on which HRS is based will also be useful for separating hydrogen from CO2 and CO in the life support technologies now being tested and developed for its manned spaceflight missions. (Source: PRNews, 12/02/14)