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NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is developing a Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) for the International Space Station (ISS). The UPA uses Vapor Compression Distillation (VCD) technology to reclaim water from pre-treated urine. This water is further processed by the Water Processor Assembly (WPA) to potable quality standards for use on the ISS. NASA has developed this technology over the last 25-30 years. Over this history, many technical issues were solved with thousands of hours of ground testing that demonstrate the ability of the UPA technology to reclaim water from urine. In recent years, NASA MSFC has been responsible for taking the UPA technology to “flight design” maturity. This paper will give a brief overview of the UPA design and a status of the major design and development efforts completed recently to mature the UPA to a flight level.

The Volatile Removal Assembly Flight Experiment (VRAFE) was performed in May of 1999, on board Shuttle Flight STS-96 to support the development of the International Space Station (ISS) Water Recovery System (WRS). The objective of this experiment was to address concerns in the performance of a two-phase, catalytic reactor in a microgravity environment. During the experiment, an unexpected finding was discovered when the VRAFE Gas/Liquid Separator (GLS) failed to separate gas from the reactor outlet stream. The VRAFE GLS was a two-membrane (flat sheet hydrophobic and hydrophilic membrane) gas trap. Flight data as well as the post-flight failure investigation determined that the GLS hydrophobic membrane failed as a result of very fine hydrophilic catalyst particles from the VRAFE reactor that had contaminated the surface of the hydrophobic membrane.

The Volatile Removal Assembly (VRA) is a high temperature catalytic oxidation process that will be used as the final treatment for recycled water aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The multiphase nature of the process had raised concerns as to the performance of the VRA in a micro gravity environment. To address these concerns, two experiments were designed. The VRA Flight Experiment (VRAFE) was designed to test a full size VRA under controlled conditions in micro gravity aboard the SPACEHAB module and in a 1-g environment and compare the performance results. The second experiment relied on visualization of two-phase flow through small column packed beds and was designed to fly aboard NASA's micro gravity test bed plane (KC-135). The objective of the KC-135 experiment was to understand the two-phase fluid flow distribution in a packed bed in micro gravity.

A liquid/gas separator called the Mostly Liquid Separator (MLS) has been devised to provide liquid/gas separation with soapy fluids in a microgravity environment, and is an integral component of the International Space Station Water Processor. Now in its third generation of development, this paper describes the evolution of the MLS design, and presents a discussion of the development test data and results.

A test has been completed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to evaluate the latest Water Recovery and Management (WRM) system and Waste Management (WM) urinal design for the United States On-Orbit Segment (USOS) of the International Space Station (ISS) with higher fidelity hardware and integration than has been achieved in previous integrated tests. Potable and urine reclamation processors were integrated with waste water generation equipment and successfully operated for a total of 116 days to evaluate the impacts of changes made as a result of the redesign from Space Station Freedom (SSF) to the ISS. This testing marked the first occasion in which the WRM was automated at the system level, allowing for evaluation of the hardware performance under ISS operating conditions. It was also the first time a “flight-like” Process Control Water Quality Monitor (PCWQM) and a WM urinal were tested in an integrated system.

A series of tests has been conducted at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to evaluate the performance of a Space Station Freedom (SSF) pre-development water recovery system. Potable, hygiene, and urine reclamation subsystems were integrated with end-use equipment items and successfully operated for a total of 35 days, including 23 days in closed-loop mode with man-in-the-loop. Although several significant subsystem physical anomalies were encountered, reclaimed potable and hygiene water routinely met current SSF water quality specifications. This paper summarizes the test objectives, system design, test activities/protocols, significant results/anomalies, and major lessons learned.

A preliminary waste water model for input to the Space Station Freedom (SSF) Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) Water Processor (WP) has been generated for design purposes. Data has been compiled from various ECLSS tests and flight sample analyses. A discussion of the characterization of the waste streams comprising the model is presented, along with a discussion of the waste water model and the rationale for the inclusion of contaminants in their respective concentrations. The major objective is to establish a methodology for the development of a waste water model and to present the current state of that model.

In support of Space Station Freedom Phase C/D Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) regenerative systems development, comparative testing was performed on predevelopment hardware of competing technologies for each regenerative function. This testing was conducted by The Boeing Aerospace and Electronics Company (BAE) at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) from late 1989 through early 1990. The purpose of the test program was to collect data on latest generation hardware in order to make final technology selections for each subassembly in the oxygen recovery and water reclamation strings. This paper discusses the testing performed, test results, and evaluation of these results relative to subsystem selections for CO2 reduction, O2 generation, potable water processing, hygiene water processing, and urine processing.