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Water recovery from wastewater is essential for the success of long-term missions to the Moon and Mars and human crew operations during explorations of these planets. Honeywell International and the team consisting of Thermodistillation Co. ( Kyiv, Ukraine) and NASA JSC Crew and Thermal Systems Division are developing an efficient wastewater processing subsystem that is based on centrifugal vacuum distillation. This subsystem will be tested at the NASA JSC Advanced Water Recovery Systems Development Facility. The Wastewater Processing Cascade Distillation Subsystem (CDS) utilizes an innovative and proven multi-stage thermodynamic process to produce purified water efficiently, and its rotary centrifugal design provides gas/liquid phase separation and liquid transport (pumping) under microgravity conditions.

The cascaded distiller CD5 is a 5-stage, rotary vacuum distiller developed jointly by Honeywell International (USA) and Thermodistillation Co. (Kiev, Ukraine) for processing of human urine and other streams of waste water onboard a spacecraft during long-duration missions. Initial performance testing of the first model of the distiller CD5-1 was conducted at the Thermodistillation laboratory in Kiev in 1999. Results of testing demonstrated superior performance of the machine, but also indicated that performance could be improved. This paper reports on performance of the next generation of the distiller, CD5-2, which is an improved model of the cascaded distiller CD5-1.