A unique low pressure water separator has been developed and will be integrated for the first time as an upgrade on existing fighter aircrafts.
The water separator's purpose is to separate the water from the main air flow at the condenser output. The main difficulty of low pressure water separation is the fact that the water consists of micron size droplets in the air stream, which are more difficult to extract than larger drops for high pressure water separation.
Based on a principle of condensate water extraction for space applications, a simple, two-stage water separator has been developed, which drastically improves the efficiency over existing devices. It combines efficiency with low pressure drop characteristics and a robust low-cost design.
The water separator design has been tailored to fit into the already defined volume and interfaces inside existing fighter aircrafts.
This paper describes performance validation of the water separator on a representative mock-up.