Development of Metal-impregnated Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Toxic Gas Contaminant Control in Advanced Life Support Systems

Abstract

The success of physico-chemical waste processing and resource recovery technologies for life support application depends partly on the ability of gas clean-up systems to efficiently remove trace contaminants generated during the process with minimal use of expendables. Highly purified metal-impregnated carbon nanotubes promise superior performance over conventional approaches to gas clean-up due to their ability to direct the selective uptake gaseous species based both on the nanotube's controlled pore size, high surface area, and ordered chemical structure that allows functionalization and on the nanotube's effectiveness as a catalyst support material for toxic contaminants removal. We present results on the purification of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and efforts at metal impregnation of the SWCNT's.

An innovative system for piston engine combustion with laser-induced ignition of the hydrocarbon fuel consisting carbon nanotubes

“…-Carbon nanotubes are a relatively recently discovered material and therefore their impact on the environment and human health is not yet fully understood [35,43,44,61]. Although nanotubes do not exhibit acute toxicity, and therefore they are for example intentionally introduced into the human body to accelerate the mending of broken bones [33], or are used to filter the air in the life support systems of spacecraft [18]. It is uncertain, however, whether or not they have any negative longterm health effects resulting from interaction with the human body.…”

Biological activity of carbon nanoparticles produced in combustion process

“…It can be assumed that the carcinogenic effect is associated with the presence of precursors to the growth of nanotubes or other metal nanoparticles such as iron, nickel, cobalt, which can easily decorate the surface of nanotubes. On the contrary, nanotubes that were cleaned of any metal nanoparticles contamination were successfully used in the purification systems of manned spacecraft [14]. The successes of clinical trials are reported, where CNTs were deliberately introduced into the human body in place of the missing bone fragments in cases of multiple fractures; CNT serves in this case as a scaffold which initiates the process of bone healing [15].…”