Department of Defense

Army Corp of Engineers

The DOE was the first to recognize the possible application of Ramgen's compression technology to hybrid fuel cells at a national fuel cell conference in North Carolina in the fall of 2002.

This led the DOE to recommend this application of the Ramgen technology to DOD officials. Working closely with the University of Alaska's Arctic Energy Technology Development Laboratory, the Company developed a project to design, build, test and demonstrate a hybrid configuration with the Rampressor operating with hot fuel cells.

The project has received support in the FY2004 DoD Budget for the first year of a four year program. Funding for the design phase of the program in FY 2004 was set at $3.58 million, of which Ramgen is to receive $1.4 million as a contractor to the University of Alaska.

DARPA/Navy

The Navy has always been interested in reducing the size and weight of its power plants as it moves toward all electric ship designs and the supporting distributed power concepts. Ramgen was awarded its first seedling to evaluate the its novel gas turbine engine concept utilizing all three of its core technologies and embodied in a compact package. The contract was completed successfully in March 2008 and featured CFD validation test in conjunction with the Naval Post Graduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA.

Ramgen enjoys an excellent working relationship with NPS and plans to continue its work to validate various flowpath components for a number of applications in conjunction with several advanced modeling activities utilizing NPS supercomputers.

DARPA/Air Force Research Laboratories

DARPA has been more than satisfied with the work performed on the initial seedling, but was inclined to favor Air Force activities. Ramgen was directed to The Air Force Research Laboratory, located at Wright-Patterson AFB to gain the interest and support.

The AFRL was less concerned with fuel efficiency than they were with weight. Their primary interest was in finding an airborne APU where weight is an overriding issue. The APU is required to support high-energy weapons and the engine needs to respond to instantaneous changes in load.

Ramgen conducted very successful combustor test on its second seedling and validated its claim to be able to load follow at these speeds.

Ramgen is just now completing its third seedling as part on its ongoing analysis in this area.