Laura N. Supra

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.