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Potable and hygiene water availability is a critical requirement for long-duration manned space missions. Frequent water quality testing helps to ensure astronaut health by providing needed feedback on the effectiveness of on-board water purification units. One of the most basic and broad-spectrum indicators of contamination is organic carbon concentration. To meet the need for water quality feedback on the International Space Station (ISS), as well as on planned missions to Luna and Mars, Lynntech is developing a mesofluidic total organic carbon analyzer (TOCA) through the NASA SBIR program. The unit has been designed to operate in the demanding environment of a long-duration manned space mission and addresses the issues of microgravity operation, an operating lifetime of 5 years, low power consumption, simple user interface, robust architecture, and inherent safety.

This paper addresses the development of a novel technology to simultaneously reduce total organic carbon (TOC) and microbial count (MC) in biological water processor (BWP) processed water. This approach also creates a biocidal environment in BWP processed water before being fed into the reverse osmosis (RO) and post processing systems. The technology is based on an advanced oxidation process using an on-demand oxidizer generator, which does not require consumable chemicals. The SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Phase I feasibility studies successfully demonstrated the process efficacy in the reduction of both TOC and MC of the BWP effluent. Also, the residual disinfectant and reduced TOC in the treated effluent minimized fouling the RO membrane and water lines. In the Phase II project, a prototype is being fabricated and evaluated for its ability to reduce TOC and MC, and extend RO membrane life.