Pickett Melanie T, Roberson Luke B, Calabria Jorge L, Bullard Talon J, Turner Gary, Yeh Daniel H
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States; NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL, United States.
NASA, Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, FL, United States.
Life Sci Space Res (Amst). 2020 Feb;24:64-82. doi: 10.1016/j.lssr.2019.10.002. Epub 2019 Oct 15.
Human missions to establish surface habitats on the Moon and Mars are planned in the coming decades. Extraplanetary surface habitat life support systems (LSS) will require new capabilities to withstand anticipated unique, harsh conditions. In order to provide safe, habitable environments for the crew, water purification systems that are robust and reliable must be in place. These water purification systems will be required to treat all sources of water in order to achieve the necessary levels of recovery needed to sustain life over the long-duration missions. Current water recovery and purification systems aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are only partially closed, requiring external inputs and resupply. Furthermore, organic wastes, such as fecal and food wastes, are currently discarded and not recycled. For long-duration missions and habitats, this is not a viable approach. The inability to recycle organic wastes represents a lost opportunity to recover critical elements (e.g., C, H, O, N, P) for subsequent food production, water purification, and atmospheric regeneration. On Earth, a variety of technologies are available to meet terrestrial wastewater treatment needs; however, these systems are rarely completely closed-loop, due to lack of economic drivers, legacy infrastructure, and the (perceived) abundance of resources on Earth. Extraplanetary LSS provides a game-changing opportunity to incentivize the development of completely closed-loop systems. Candidate technologies may be biological, physical, or chemical, with associated advantages and disadvantages. This paper presents a survey of potential technologies, along with their inputs, outputs and requirements, which may be suitable for next-generation regenerative water purification in space. With this information, particular technologies can be down-selected for subsystem integration testing and optimization. In order for future space colonies to have closed-loop systems which minimize consumable inputs and maximize recovery, strategic implementation of a variety of complementary subsystems is needed.
在未来几十年里，人类计划在月球和火星上建立表面栖息地。行星际表面栖息地生命支持系统（LSS）将需要具备新的能力，以承受预期的独特恶劣条件。为了为宇航员提供安全、宜居的环境，必须配备强大且可靠的水净化系统。这些水净化系统需要处理所有水源，以达到长期任务维持生命所需的必要回收水平。国际空间站（ISS）上目前的水回收和净化系统只是部分封闭的，需要外部输入和补给。此外，有机废物，如粪便和食物残渣，目前被丢弃且未被回收利用。对于长期任务和栖息地来说，这不是一个可行的方法。无法回收有机废物意味着失去了回收关键元素（如碳、氢、氧、氮、磷）以用于后续食物生产、水净化和大气再生的机会。在地球上，有多种技术可满足陆地废水处理需求；然而，由于缺乏经济驱动力、传统基础设施以及地球上（人们认为）资源丰富，这些系统很少是完全闭环的。行星际生命支持系统提供了一个改变游戏规则的机会，可激励完全闭环系统的开发。候选技术可能是生物、物理或化学技术，各有其优缺点。本文对可能适用于下一代太空再生水净化的潜在技术进行了综述，包括它们的输入、输出和要求。有了这些信息，就可以筛选出特定技术进行子系统集成测试和优化。为了使未来的太空殖民地拥有闭环系统，最大限度地减少消耗品输入并最大化回收率，需要对各种互补子系统进行战略实施。
