A Novel Ion Exchange System to Purify Mixed ISS Waste Water Brines for Chemical Production and Enhanced Water Recovery

Current International Space Station water recovery regimes produce a sizable portion of waste water brine. This brine is highly toxic and water recovery is poor: a highly wasteful proposition. With new biological techniques that do not require waste water chemical pretreatment, the resulting brine w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inNASA Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI). Conference Proceedings
Main Authors Lunn, Griffin Michael, Spencer, LaShelle E, Ruby, Anna Maria, McCaskill, Andrew
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Hampton NASA/Langley Research Center 13.07.2014
Subjects
Brines
Chromium
Environmental control
International Space Station
Ion exchange
Ion exchange resins
Life support systems
Organic chemistry
Polymers
Potassium chloride
Pretreatment
Recovering
Regeneration
Resins
Saline water
Selectivity
State of the art
Viability
Wastewater
Water purification
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Current International Space Station water recovery regimes produce a sizable portion of waste water brine. This brine is highly toxic and water recovery is poor: a highly wasteful proposition. With new biological techniques that do not require waste water chemical pretreatment, the resulting brine would be chromium-free and nitrate rich which can allow possible fertilizer recovery for future plant systems. Using a system of ion exchange resins we can remove hardness, sulfate, phosphate and nitrate from these brines to leave only sodium and potassium chloride. At this point modern chlor-alkali cells can be utilized to produce a low salt stream as well as an acid and base stream. The first stream can be used to gain higher water recovery through recycle to the water separation stage while the last two streams can be used to regenerate the ion exchange beds used here, as well as other ion exchange beds in the ISS. Conveniently these waste products from ion exchange regeneration would be suitable as plant fertilizer. In this report we go over the performance of state of the art resins designed for high selectivity of target ions under brine conditions. Using ersatz ISS waste water we can evaluate the performance of specific resins and calculate mass balances to determine resin effectiveness and process viability. If this system is feasible then we will be one step closer to closed loop environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for current or future applications.