Technical Paper
A Simulation Approach to Minimize Water Supply, Storage Capacity and Treatment Capacity Requirements in ALS System
2006-07-17
2006-01-2244
Due to expensive transportation cost, utilization of waste water treatment technologies is regarded as more cost effective than shipping clean water from Earth for long term space missions. As larger than required water treatment capacity is a waste of resources and cost, the relationship among crewmembers and crops water consumption and production, water treatment capacity, water storage tank capacity and water supply required from Earth is explored in this study. Two scenarios and two mission durations are studied to investigate the impacts of crop addition and time length, respectively, on the water subsystem cost. Crops are grown to meet crewmembers' energy requirements. Crewmembers and crops water consumption and production, number of crewmembers and mission type are assumed based on educated guesses and references to documented sources and real life scenarios.