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Carbon dioxide (CO2) management is critical for all life forms and certainly for all human space-flight missions. CO2 must be extracted and removed or recycled safely, reliably, and rapidly while maintaining CO2 levels within allowable limits independent of crew activity. In view of ESM considerations the system should minimize mass, volume, energy and crew maintenance. Such considerations favor regenerable systems. Our efforts in this direction are focused on a contained liquid membrane design enzyme catalyzed by carbonic anhydrase that exhibits high permeance, ca. 5*10−7 molesCO2/m2 s Pa, very high selectivity vs. nitrogen and is non-responsive to a wide variety of VOCs. Over the last year we have addressed five issues: scale-up, integrated water management, enzyme immobilization, system modeling, and process engineering design. We have developed a membrane element (10 cm × 10 cm × 0.67 cm) capable of removing 0.09 kg/d CO2 from a 0.5% feed stream.

Control of carbon dioxide (CO2) is crucial for all crew inhabited space-flight missions. Air revitalization requires safe and reliable CO2 extraction systems characterized by small volume, low mass, low rate of energy use, minimal use of consumables, and little or no crew time for operation and maintenance. Current designs are relatively costly to operate due to consumable usage rates (e.g., LiOH), high mass and/or volume (solid amines), and/or high energy costs associated with regeneration of CO2 adsorption capacity (e.g., metal oxide). Our work focuses on the development of a highly efficient enzyme catalyzed, Carbonic Anhydrase based liquid membrane biomimetic reactor. We report here on the use of aqueous chemistry modeling to guide the design of new liquid membrane compositions. We examine the effects of these new solutions on enzyme activity and on the solubility of other gases in the mix.