DARPA: Defense Sciences Office (DSO)– Fuel Access Anywhere, Regardless of Means (FAARM)/ )/ Advanced Research Concepts (ARC)- abstracts

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ARC Opportunities are designed to allow an individual researcher the opportunity and time to focus on nascent, paradigm-shifting ideas for national security applications.

The delivery of fuel to contested and resource-constrained regions is a logistics challenge for the

Department of Defense. Distributed production of nitrogen- and carbon-based fuels could

eliminate the associated supply chain vulnerabilities and enable agile expeditionary units.

Recent advancements in the field of synthetic fuels for commercial applications offer promise,

but, at this time, synthesis of energy-dense fuels of interest, such as ammonia, methanol, and

gasoline, remain energetically costly and are not viable to deploy at the point of need. In

addition, for military operations, having efficient and reliable small-scale transportable systems

is more important than commercial financial considerations. Developing robust, mobile methods

of fuel production for DoD applications in contested environments requires alternative formation

pathways that are deployable under ambient conditions with a low energy requirement.

The FAARM ARC targets innovative techniques to form a wide range of synthetic fuels from

varied readily available sources for DoD applications. The FAARM ARC Opportunity is

soliciting ideas to explore the following question: Can energy-dense fuels be synthesized using

an efficient, small-scale system?

Funding: up to $300,000 for 12 months.

https://sam.gov/opp/0eb10a5b87fc4075964a1ea8f592ea0e/view