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A regenerative Air Revitalization system has been developed by JAXA. Its major assemblies are a CO2 concentration assembly which contains membrane dryers to remove humidity and zeolite to remove CO2, a CO2 reduction assembly, and a water electrolysis assembly to which water is supplied in the vapor phase through molecule-size pores in a NAFION membrane rather than as liquid to solve the problem of gas-liquid separation in microgravity conditions. A small satellite mission using a subscale air revitalization system (for 1/10 person) is planned as an orbital demonstration of solving microgravity-related problems, interface problems between assembly, compaction problems and saving energy design. A small satellite is used because it has a greater chance of being selected for flight than ISS experiments, and it will be useful for mission assurance to perform small satellite experiments before an ISS manned mission.

As a CO2 removing and recovering technology, the solid amine utilized as a vacuum desorbing type was developed. The evaluation experiments to measure fundamental characteristics of this material was conducted using the dry air and as the results, the high adsorbing rate, 10 wt% for short period and 7 wt% for long period was obtained and also 7 wt% of adsorbing rate can be expected for the operation of desorption temperature of 80 °C. High accuracy thermobalance device so called thermogravimetric analyzer was utilized to measure adsorption and desorption values of CO2.