Evaluation of Regenerative Portable Life Support System Options

Extravehicular activity (EVA) will be used extensively on the Space Station as a major resource for assembly, maintenance and customer payload servicing. The use of current hardware technology for this resource could result in prohibitively high transportation costs that are associated with consumables resupply. In addition, vapor originating from the kind of water sublimating heat rejection devices currently in use has the potential to create unacceptable levels of contamination to certain user experiments. Therefore, the use of non-venting regenerative processes is being considered for Space Station application.

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of such processes for carbon dioxide removal, humidity control and heat rejection. Specific capacities and estimated weights, volumes and power allocations are quantified for each process considered. Representative packaging geometries of selected combinations are also presented. In addition, process interactions, candidate regeneration techniques and potential cost savings are discussed.