Search Results

During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed-Loop Air Revitalization System ARES. The potential of ARES e.g. as part of the ISS ECLSS is to significantly reduce the water upload demand and to increase the safety of the crew by reducing dependence on re-supply flights. The design is adapted to the interfaces of the new base lined Russian MLM module as possible location for a future installation of ARES. Due to the lack of orbital support equipment and interfaces to a waste water bus, to a feed water supply line and due to the availability of only one single vent line it was necessary to make the ARES process water loop as independent as possible from the host vehicle. Another optimization effort was to match the CO2 desorption profile with the available hydrogen flow to achieve a sufficient water recovery performance, while meeting all related safety requirements, minimizing complexity and improving reliability.

During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed Loop Air Revitalization System ARES. The potential of ARES for future space exploration missions is to significantly reduce the water upload demand, increase the safety of the crew by reducing dependency on re-supply flights and, due to the launch mass restraints, make future exploration missions to other planets possible. The ARES demonstrator includes the functions of CO2 concentration, CO2 reduction and oxygen generation. Whereas in previous phases ARES was designed to operate in NODE3 of the ISS, this has been changed to an intended ARES operation in the Russian Multifunctional Laboratory Module MLM. This year’s activities concentrated on process optimization of the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CCA) interaction with the Sabatier Reactor (CRA), extreme conditions testing, life time tests with the Sabatier Reactor and the oxygen generation stack and system testing.

During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed Loop Air Revitalisation System ARES. The potential of ARES e.g. as part of the ISS ECLSS is to significantly reduce the water upload demand and increase the safety of the crew by reducing dependency on re-supply. The current activities concentrate on the development of a full-scale demonstrator with ‘engineering model’ quality. The demonstrator will include the functions of CO2 concentration, CO2 reduction and oxygen generation. All components will fit into one ISPR. The design will minimize the number of external interfaces in order to achieve a high degree of independence and flexibility with respect to accommodation on the ISS. The paper describes the current development status and touches on critical technology tests for performance optimization.

During the last years extensive work has been done to design and develop the Closed Loop Air Revitalisation System ARES. The potential of ARES e.g. as part of the ISS ECLSS is to significantly reduce the water upload demand. The current activities concentrate on the development of a full-scale demonstrator with ‘engineering model’ quality. The demonstrator will include the functions of CO2 concentration, CO2 reduction and oxygen generation. All components will fit into one ISPR. The design will minimize the number of external interfaces in order to achieve a high degree of independence with respect to accommodation on the ISS. The paper describes the current development status and touches on critical technology tests for performance optimization.

Gas-water separation is a fundamental requirement during long term operation of manned and man-tended space systems. Two areas of specific concern are in cabin humidity and temperature control and in gas removal from cooling water loops. This paper addresses design and testing of breadboard models for a condensate separator and a gas trap. Both models are based on semi-permeable membranes as main functional elements. The breadboard designs are driven by the requirements of the COLUMBUS space station. The condensate separator shall remove heat as well as water vapour from a humid air flow. Water shall permeate through the membranes, that are separating the air from the cooling water. The gas trap shall filter gas bubbles in a water loop and release the gas from the loop. In addition it shall maintain dissolved gas levels well below saturation.

A summary of an ESA/ESTEC sponsored technology research programme is given aiming at the development of a CO2 partial pressure sensor suitable for monitoring the PP CO2 inside the oxygen ventilation loop of the EVA life support module. At first, a trade-off of candidate sensor concepts is presented. As result, the infrared optical sensor concept has been selected. In the frame of a discussion on basic facts of IR absorption the rationale for the selected configuration of the IR sensor is given. A breadboard model of the PP CO2 sensor together with a test set-up has been established. The sensor was subjected to a test programme consisting of two separate test periods. The main results are given. Finally, the findings are discussed in the light of the development of future flight hardware.