NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Sustainable Resource Recovery from Trash, Waste, and Overboard VentingSpace travel and planetary missions for long-endurance human presence require Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) loop-closure. The air and water resource loops are generally closed with their processes having been established through extensive development, testing, and long-term use on International Space Station. Closure of the air and water loops have enabled oxygen and hydrogen sustainability. Carbon sustainability has yet to be addressed. Waste and trash, which also contains hydrogen and oxygen and abundant carbon have not been developed to the extent air and water have. Waste and trash have generally been dealt with in terms of simple safening, storage, and disposal. In externally disposing of waste, which includes C1 and C2 hydrocarbon gases, lost resources not only increase mission cost they can result in space and planetary pollution that can lead to unfavorable public opinion. With all this in mind, we explore the idea of carbon sustainability within closed-cycle waste, trash, and C1/C2 reprocessing. Starting from the current ECLS System roadmap, we identify resources that are not yet captured in closed-cycle processes but are lost when crossing the thermodynamic boundaries of an open system. Such pseudo-resources are trash, waste, and the gaseous carbon products of carbon dioxide reduction. We then consider different means and processes for minimizing pseudo-resource loss so as to “close the carbon loop.” There are cases in which pseudo-resources need to be externally discarded, such as reducing spacecraft acceleration mass. In this case we examine various processes that can be beneficial to missions even when these pseudo-resources are lost. An example would be the conversion of waste into propellant, which can produce thrust while at the same time reducing mass for transit acceleration (and ultimately propellant mass at launch), in which case we propose a means for evaluating the value of converting waste into propellant for different propulsion systems.
Document ID
20210024315
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Jeffrey M Lee
(Ames Research Center Mountain View, California, United States)
Steven Andrew Sepka
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States)
Justine Tra-my Richardson
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration El Segundo, California, United States)
Date Acquired
November 13, 2021
Subject Category
Man/System Technology And Life Support
Meeting Information
Meeting: 51st International Conference on Environmental Systems
Location: St. Paul, MN
Country: US
Start Date: July 10, 2022
End Date: July 14, 2022
Sponsors: Texas Tech University
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 089407.01.21.02
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Technical Review
Professional Review
Keywords
waste
trash

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available