Ozark Integrated Circuits Inc. of Fayetteville will receive a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for its Phase II Small Business Innovation Research project, “Rugged, Long-Life Flow Monitoring for Enhanced Geothermal Systems.”
The company said the grant will allow it to use its expertise and technology to develop a system to continuously profile high-temperature geothermal wells, which can be used for electrical power generation and other applications.
Ozark Integrated Circuits is located in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park at the University of Arkansas.
Founder Matt Francis said that, for the first time, drillers will be able to continuously monitor temperature, pressure, flow and other important data at many points in high-temperature wells for thousands of hours. He said the system would also reduce the drillers’ costs and could be useful in other high-temperature markets, such as jet engine control and monitoring.
Ozark Integrated Circuits has won contracts from NASA to help develop components for an ultraviolet imager to study the environment on Venus. The company is also working with the U.S. Air Force and the UA High Density Electronics Center to develop packaging and assembly systems for controls in jet engines.
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