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This research is intended to provide contamination and ecosynthesis researchers with an engineering development tool for understanding the productivity of metabolically active low temperature brine habitats as potential sites for bacterial colonization by forward contaminating Earth organisms. The specific extremophile microbial culturing conditions targeted were psychrophilic (low temperature), halophilic (high salt), high ambient sulfur, and anaerobic. These low temperature or freezing point suppressed brine habitats with high ambient sulfur concentrations have been suggested as potential subsurface water resources on both Mars and Europa, and may be common among potentially viable extant water environments in the outer solar system.

Direct osmotic concentration (DOC) is a membrane treatment process for reclamation of space craft wastewater. It incorporates a novel system architecture that includes a forward osmosis (FO) and reverse osmosis (RO) subsystem for hygiene (gray) water, and a membrane distillation subsystem for the treatment of urine and humidity condensate. The products of these subsystems are combined and then post-treated by a catalytic oxidation subsystem. This paper documents progress made during the second year of a three year Rapid Technology Development Team (RTDT) effort.

Direct osmotic concentration (DOC) is an integrated membrane treatment process designed for the reclamation of spacecraft wastewater. The system includes forward osmosis (FO), membrane evaporation, reverse osmosis (RO) and an aqueous phase catalytic oxidation (APCO) post-treatment unit. This document describes progress in the third year of a four year project to advance hardware maturity of this technology to a level appropriate for human rated testing. The current status of construction and testing of the final deliverable is covered and preliminary calculations of equivalent system mass are funished.