Hyliion Holdings has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) government contract by the United States Navy. Phase 1 of the award, N241–060, will allow Hyliion to create a preliminary design of a modular generator system that integrates the Navy’s specifications with Hyliion’s KARNO generator technology.

The KARNO generator is a linear heat generator that leverages advanced 3D metal printed components and proprietary flameless oxidation technology to produce clean electricity.

Similar to a linear free-piston Stirling Cycle, the KARNO generator uses heat to expand working fluid within a hermetically sealed cavity, pushing a piston assembly through a magnetic field to create electric current. This heat can be created by reacting fuels in an external reaction chamber or captured from other external heat sources.

With this contract, Hyliion will showcase a design concept of the KARNO generator in a megawatt-scale modular system. The system will be engineered to offer a versatile and flexible approach to meet the US government’s Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) cross-platform requirements, scalable to various power needs and adaptable to the available platform space.

Hyliion plans to leverage its foundational 200-kilowatt (kW) KARNO genset, combining multiple units together to achieve the desired power output.

The primary objective of the N241-060 program is to develop and demonstrate a megawatt (MW) scale, ultra-reliable, and efficient USV modular generator concept tailored to the Navy’s requirements. This concept involves configuring smaller kW-scale building block power units in a high-density package to achieve a 4,000-hour no-touch maintenance periodicity for continuous operation in a naval environment.

Hyliion says that the KARNO generator, with its exceptional form factor and ability to operate on multiple fuels, including NATO F-76, is ideally suited for the Navy’s USV program. The system’s hermetically sealed architecture, with only one moving part per shaft, is designed for maintenance-free operation over long running hours.

Modular in design, the generator is expected to show an improvement in fuel efficiency, require significantly lower maintenance costs and have a much lower emissions profile than conventional generators. It is also capable of operating on more than 20 different fuels, including hydrogen, natural gas, propane, ammonia and conventional fuels.