Development of Low Pressure Membrane Distillation Water Processor

A water recovery system from waste water is essential for long-duration manned space missions. The waste water consists of shower, laundry, hand wash, urine, and humidity condensate. The water recycle system also contributes to the reduce quantity and frequency of resupply from the Earth. There are many candidate technologies to process the waste water for reuse. The total water recovery and management system is combined with several process technologies. The authors focused on the membrane distillation process which is one candidate of water recovery system. Since 1997, the authors have been studying the water recovery system with low pressure membrane distillation method. This paper describes the study and results of preliminary experiments.