Within the not-too-distant future, astronauts could possibly be ingesting water harvested from their very own urine, courtesy of a Dune-inspired system built-in into their spacesuit. If nothing else, it ought to actually beat simply peeing right into a diaper.
At the moment, when astronauts should put on their spacesuits for lengthy intervals of time, they urinate straight right into a “most absorbency garment” (MAG) … which is actually a flowery grownup diaper. The urine stays in that garment, near their pores and skin, till they’re in a position to undress.
Evidently, this is not a really comfy or hygienic association. Moreover, the urine in the MAG merely will get disposed of together with the remainder of the garment. In a spacecraft or on an area station, the place each drop of probably drinkable water is sacred, this could possibly be seen as wasteful.
Within the Dune books and flicks, residents of the desert planet Arrakis addressed this drawback with “stillsuits” that recycled their sweat and urine into drinkable water. Led by Prof. Christopher E. Mason, scientists at Cornell College have now developed an analogous real-world system. This is the way it works …
Claire Walter
Customers put on a modified MAG made from a number of layers of versatile cloth, which includes a molded silicone assortment cup which inserts over their genitals. There are each female and male variations of the cup, each of that are lined with polyester microfiber or a nylon-spandex mix that attracts urine away from the physique.
Because the wearer urinates into the cup, the drawn-away liquid is detected by an built-in humidity sensor, which triggers a pump to hoover the urine out of the cup’s lining and right into a related backpack. There, it passes by means of a two-step ahead and reverse osmosis filtration system. This course of separates water from the opposite elements of the urine, together with salt.
Luca Bielski
The ensuing purified water then has electrolytes added to it, to supply sustenance throughout spacewalks or different actions which will take a number of hours to carry out. In a last step, that fortified water is pumped right into a hydration-pack-like in-suit ingesting bag. Whereas spacesuits do already incorporate such water baggage, these baggage could possibly be smaller in the event that they have been periodically getting topped up with recycled-urine water.
In an present prototype model of the system, the gathering and purification of 500 ml (17 oz) of urine takes simply 5 minutes. Moreover, the setup converts urine to ingesting water with an effectivity of 87%.
Karen Morales
The battery-powered backpack unit measures 38 x 23 x 23 cm (15 x 9 x 9 in) and ideas the scales at about 8 kg (18 lb). These figures will probably get smaller because the know-how is developed additional, and enters the subsequent part of testing.
“Our system may be examined in simulated microgravity situations, as microgravity is the first house issue we should account for,” says Mason. “These checks will make sure the system’s performance and security earlier than it’s deployed in precise house missions.”
A paper on the undertaking was not too long ago printed within the journal Frontiers in House Applied sciences.
Supply: Frontiers
