In preparation for construction of a new 35,000 square foot manufacturing facility Barber-Nichols Inc. (BNI) recently acquired 1.8 acres of land adjacent to its current location in Arvada, Colorado. BNI specializes in the design and manufacture of pumps, turbines, compressors, and controllers for demanding aerospace, defense, scientific, power generation, and commercial/industrial applications. The company has…
High Speed Electrical Machinery Windage In 2012, Xdot Engineering and Analysis completed a Phase I/Phase II SBIR effort funded by the US Air Force. This goal of the project was to develop methods of reducing windage loss in high speed electrical machinery in the range of 50 kW to 200 kW. The project consisted of…
In early 2018, Xdot was awarded a two-year, $749,882 Phase II STTR contract from the US Navy to continue subscale testing and development of a water lubricated bearing software analysis tool.
Barber-Nichols Inc. (BNI) is pleased to be delivering liquid nitrogen pumps for High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) power transmission cables. HTS cables can transmit more power than traditional cables eliminating the need for infrastructure upgrades as power demands increase. Additionally, HTS cables automatically contain faults, reduce right-of-way requirements, and electromagnetic field interference. The pumps BNI delivered cool…
Barber-Nichols has been selected to design and manufacture a high-speed (30,000 rpm), four-stage water vapor compression system to support the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) with their US Department of Energy ARPA-E Award to develop a more efficient air conditioning system that enables evaporative cooling to be used in humid climates. Evaporative cooling uses less…
Barber-Nichols Inc. (BNI) has been awarded a contract by Fermi National Laboratory to supply liquid argon pumps for use in the ProtoDUNE experimental program at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The hermetically sealed cryogenic pumps will be used to circulate liquid argon, the neutrino target medium, through ultra-clean detectors and provide long-term reliable…
Under a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Grant, Barber-Nichols designed, built and tested a cryogenic compressor capable of densifying liquid hydrogen. Cryogenic propellant densification improves rocket specific impulse (ISP) by allowing a greater mass of cryogenic propellant to be loaded into a given tank volume and if…
Billions of gallons of water are evaporated each year at electric power plants in the U.S. for cooling purposes. As freshwater resources become strained in the U.S. and the rest of the world it is of great interest to find alternative dry air cooling approaches. Standard dry air cooling requires equipment that is very large,…
Barber-Nichols engineers Robert Fuller and David Wehrlen have been granted United States Patent Number US 9,231,504 B2 for a Brushless DC (BLDC) motor electrical control system that increases motor efficiency by reducing pulse width modulation switching frequency to smooth and reduce harmonics present in the motor current waveform. This invention allows the operation of BLDC…
2016 marks Barber-Nichols’ 50th anniversary and the company pulled out all the stops on May 20th to celebrate! The event included live music, food and refreshments, talks by company founders Bob Barber and Ken Nichols, and the world recording setting steam-powered car built by the company in 1985 made a one-day appearance for the event.…
