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In NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, humans will once again travel beyond the confines of earth's gravity, this time to remain there for extended periods. These forays will place unprecedented demands on launch systems. They must not only blast out of earth's gravity well as during the Apollo moon missions, but also launch the supplies needed to sustain a larger crew over much longer periods. Thus all spacecraft systems, including those for the separation of metabolic carbon dioxide and water from a crewed vehicle, must be minimized with respect to mass, power, and volume. Emphasis is also placed on system robustness both to minimize replacement parts and ensure crew safety when a quick return to earth is not possible. This paper describes efforts to improve on typical packed beds of sorbent pellets by making use of structured sorbents and alternate bed configurations to improve system efficiency and reliability.

This paper describes testing of four-bed molecular sieve (4BMS) development hardware in support of future operations of the International Space Station (ISS) Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA). During 1998, testing of a MSFC 4BMS included operations with the 4BMS inlet air drawn directly from the cabin atmosphere instead of the baseline air source downstream of a Condensing Heat Exchanger (CHX), operating with high carbon dioxide (CO2) loading, and long duration operation in a power save mode. Additionally, testing with increased coolant water temperature was performed to determine effects on the systems CO2 removal performance.