Since the space station operates inside closed environment over long periods of time, it is essential to develop technologies to control trace contaminants produced by the metabolism of the crew and by the materials from which it is made.
In order to accomplish this objective, we first of all conducted studies of both the constituents and amounts of all the trace contaminants expected to appear, and then, on the basis of these studies, we discussed the optimum means of controlling them. As a result, we selected a combination of adsorption and catalytic oxidation as the technology to control these trace contaminants. We conducted adsorption experiments, catalytic oxidation experiments, and experiments to determine the effect on the catalyst capabilities of silicon and halogen constituents, which are thought to be catalytic poisons. In addition to these experiments, we conducted a discussion of performance simulation analysis method for the control of trace contaminants with many constituents, and determined the effectiveness by evaluating a comparison of results.
Based upon the aforementioned experimental results and a review of the analyses, we discussed designs for trace contaminant control (TCC) system in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), and noted technical issues to be solved in the future.
This paper is a summary of what we accomplished through the research described above.