Contaminant Robust Water Extraction from Lunar and Martian Soil for In Situ Resource Utilization - System Testing

Abstract

Water has been identified on a number of planets and celestial bodies with the potential for future manned exploration, including Mars. Water is a crucial resource for any extended duration mission carrying humans. The ability to generate propellants and life support consumables from available water and other in-situ resources is vital to any mission success that does not solely rely on carrying full supplies from Earth. However, many of the water sources on extraterrestrial surfaces are assumed to be contaminated with compounds that are difficult to separate from water and are damaging to downstream processing equipment. A water clean-up system is key to the implementation of water extraction from planetary sources. An ionomer-membrane based Contaminant Robust In-situ Water Extractor (CRIWE) is currently being developed to clean water for in-situ processing. Various system architectures employing CRIWE technology for both Lunar and Martian environments in the context of water electrolysis were previously reported. A full-scale water extractor EDU based on a Martian architecture has since been developed. The EDU was tested at full-scale conditions. A contaminated water vapor stream was delivered to the EDU. The water vapor that transported across the membrane was collected as condensate and sent to a lab for analysis. Test results including extracted water purity and recovery rates are presented. Nomenclature% େ = percent contaminant crossover % = normalized percent contaminant crossover CRIWE = Contaminant Robust In Situ Water Extractor DI = deionized EDU = Engineering Development Unit ISRU = In Situ Resource Utilization JSC = Johnson Space Center mሶ ୌଶ = sample water mass flow rate mሶ ୌଶ തതതതതതത = average sample water mass flow rate from the first three tests PEM = Proton Exchange Membrane RH = relative humidity SOE = Solid Oxide Electrolysis TC = thermocouple

Green and Sustainable Treatment of Urine Wastewater with a Membrane-Aerated Biofilm Reactor for Space Applications

“…To date, a completely closed CELSS that could last months to years has not been achieved yet. The ISS urine wastewater was chemically stabilized and then distilled by vapor compression distillation (VCD) process, which was restricted to the solubility limit of various compounds inside [3]. During this process, about 15% of the total volume of this stream would remain as urine brine, which could not be further concentrated by distillation [4].…”

Thermal Extraction of Volatiles from Lunar and Asteroid Regolith in Axisymmetric Crank–Nicolson Modeling

“…Methods on asteroids could be similar or could involve bagging the entire asteroid and heating or spallation of the rocky material with concentrated sunlight (Sercel et al 2016). Water can be used to make rocket propellant to reduce the cost of operating in space (Sanders et al 2008;Hubbard et al 2013;Sowers 2016;Kutter and Sowers 2016), can serve as passive radiation shielding for astronauts (Parker 2006), and can provide life support (Kelsey et al 2013). In addition to supporting national space agency activities, water-derived rocket propellant can be used commercially for boosting telecommunication satellites from low-Earth orbit or from geosynchronous transfer orbit into geostationary orbit, or for supporting space tourism or other nongovernmental activities (Metzger 2016).…”

Commercial lunar propellant architecture: A collaborative study of lunar propellant production

“…The technology basis for this ISRU-derived water processing application builds off preliminary work completed by Paragon under previous NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract awards. The Contaminant Robust In-Situ Water Extraction (CRIWE) program assessed the application of IWP technology for in situ recovery of water from lunar, Martian, and asteroid regolith [45]. CRIWE achieved TRL 4 at the end of a NASA Phase 2 SBIR contract.…”