Allen MacKnight

Cascade Distillation Subsystem Hardware Development for Verification Testing

Water recovery from wastewater is essential for the success of long-term missions to the Moon and Mars and human crew operations during explorations of these planets. Honeywell International and the team consisting of Thermodistillation Co. ( Kyiv, Ukraine) and NASA JSC Crew and Thermal Systems Division are developing an efficient wastewater processing subsystem that is based on centrifugal vacuum distillation. This subsystem will be tested at the NASA JSC Advanced Water Recovery Systems Development Facility. The Wastewater Processing Cascade Distillation Subsystem (CDS) utilizes an innovative and proven multi-stage thermodynamic process to produce purified water efficiently, and its rotary centrifugal design provides gas/liquid phase separation and liquid transport (pumping) under microgravity conditions. Key performance and success criteria for the subsystem design are: water production rate of 5 kg/hr max., specific power consumption at less than -140 W/kg, and the successful operation of the technology at NASA-JSC. The system will operate in automatic mode and the control algorithms have been formulated and tested experimentally.

Breadboard Development of the Advanced Inflatable Airlock System for EVA

The Advanced Inflatable Airlock (AIA) System is currently being developed for the Space Launch Initiative (SLI). The objective of the AIA System is to greatly reduce the cost associated with performing extravehicular activity (EVA) from manned launch vehicles by reducing launch weight and volume from previous hard airlock systems such as the Space Shuttle and Space Station airlocks. The AIA System builds upon previous technology from the TransHab inflatable structures project, from Space Shuttle and Space Station Airlock systems, and from terrestrial flexible structures projects. The AIA system design is required to be versatile and capable of modification to fit any platform or vehicle needing EVA capability. During the basic phase of the program the AIA conceptual design and key features were developed to help meet the SLI program goals of reduced cost and program risk. Option 1 focused on development of key design features and testing of breadboard units to demonstrate effectiveness of the design solutions. This paper discusses the progress made during option 1 of the AIA program. BACKGROUND

Evaluation of conditions necessary for successful bioprocessing of gray water in a microgravity environment

A unique combination of researchers are investigating biological and engineering aspects of a biological wastewater treatment system which could effectively function to treat gray water in a microgravity environment such as that on the International Space Station and human-occupied interplanetary spacecraft. As part of the effort, 23 bacterial strains have been isolated from a bioprocessor operating at unit gravity and various strain combinations have been tested in microgravity for survivability and reduction of total organic carbon in ersatz gray water. All tested strains survive equally well in microgravity and unit gravity and each is capable of reducing TOC in microgravity. While the results reported are encouraging, they also reveal that current testing procedures and equipment are inadequate for fully evaluating bioprocessing in microgravity.

Biological Wastewater Processor Experiment Definition

INTRODUCTION The primary objective of the biological wastewater processor experiment definition NRA was to conduct preparatory ground-based research to enable development and optimization of future space flight experiments. Research tasks encompassed performing a comparative bioprocessor study to examine adaptation of existing bioprocessing technology for use in microgravity, microbiological consortium evaluation to characterize the bacteria used for degrading wastewater, bench-top testing to investigate surrogate parameters for monitoring bioprocessor performance, computer modeling to investigate start up of the reactors and scaling laws, and prototype infrastructure development to address form, fit and function requirements for designing a space flight-qualified payload.