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This paper reviews designs of urine distillation systems for spacecraft water recovery. Consideration is given to both air evaporation and vacuum distillation cycles, to the means for improving cycle performance (such as heat pumps, multistaging, and rotary evaporators), and to system concepts offering promise for future development. Vacuum distillation offers lower power consumption, at some increase in system complexity; air evaporation distillation is capable of providing higher water recovery efficiency, which could offset the lower power consumption advantage of vacuum distillation for long-duration missions.

The paper deals with possible performance enhancement of the system for water reclamation from urine based on a principle of atmospheric distillation. It is shown by way of example using the system operating on Mir that the introduction of heat energy recuperation, an increase in heat-and-mass transfer efficiency on evaporation and the optimization of the air flowrate in the distillation cycle allow a rise in the capacity of the distillation assembly and a reduction in specific energy. The system outfitted with a rotary evaporator/separator and a thermoelectric heat pump is reviewed. The design and experimental data verify the feasibility and benefits of the system updating.