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Supercritical CO2 Cleaning for Planetary Protection and Contamination ControlWe have designed and built a prototype Supercritical CO? Cleaning (SCC) system at JPL. The key features of the system are: 1) the parts inside a high-pressure vessel can be rotated at high speeds; 2) the same thermodynamic condition is maintained during First-In First-Out flushing to keep solvent power constant; and 3) the boil-off during decompression is induced in a separate vessel downstream. Our goal is to demonstrate SCC's ability to remove trace amounts of microbial and organic contaminants down to parts per billion levels from spacecraft material surfaces for future astrobiology missions. The initial cleaning test results showed that SCC can achieve cleanliness levels of 0.01 microgram/cm(sup 2) or less for hydrophobic contaminants such as dioctyl phthalate and silicone and it is less effective in the removal and inactivation of the hydrophilic bacterial spores as expected. However, with the use of a polar co-solvent, the efficacy may improve dramatically. The same results were obtained using liquid CO?. This opens up the possibility of using subcritical cleaning conditions, which may prove to be more compatible with certain spacecraft hardware.
Document ID
20150008469
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Lin, Ying
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Zhong, Fang
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Aveline, David
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Anderson, Mark
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Chung, Shirley
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Mennella, Jerami
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Schubert, Wayne
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
May 19, 2015
Publication Date
March 6, 2010
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Environment Pollution
Meeting Information
Meeting: IEEE Aerospace Conference
Location: Big Sky, MT
Country: United States
Start Date: March 6, 2010
End Date: March 13, 2010
Sponsors: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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