Refine Your Search

Search Results

Technical Paper

A Volatile Organic Analyzer for Space Station: Description and Evaluation of a Gas Chromatography/Ion Mobility Spectrometer

1992-07-01
921385
Compared with previous U.S. space flight missions, the risk of atmospheric contamination on board Space Station Freedom (SSF) is substantially increased because of the large number of on-board experiments, long-term storage of chemical wastes, and the release of offgas products into the closed environment over the station's 30-year lifetime. Degraded air quality aboard SSF could affect crew health and safety as well as mission success. This paper describes the development of technologies for an on-board Volatile Organic Analyzer (VOA), an essential component of the Environmental Heath System (EHS) air-quality monitoring strategy that warns the crew and ground personnel if volatile compounds exceed safe exposure limits. Achieving the performance requirements established for the VOA within power and weight constraints led to a novel approach in which gas chromatography (GC) was combined with ion-mobility spectrometry (IMS).
X