Sabatier Engineering Development Unit

2003-01-2496

07/07/2003

Event
International Conference On Environmental Systems
Authors Abstract
Content
To facilitate life support system loop closure on board the International Space Station (ISS), the Node 3 Oxygen Generation System (OGS) rack contains a functional scar to accommodate a future Carbon dioxide Reduction Assembly (CRA). This CRA uses a Sabatier reactor to produce water from CO2 scrubbed from cabin air and hydrogen byproduct from OGS electrolysis. As part of the effort to better understand and define the functional scar, significant risk mitigation activities have been performed. To address integration risks, a CRA Engineering Development Unit (EDU) has been developed that is functionally equivalent to a flight CRA and is suitable for integrating with ground based carbon dioxide removal and oxygen generation systems.
The CRA EDU has been designed to be functionally equivalent to the Sabatier Reactor Subsystem (SRS) portion of the CRA. This paper discusses the CRA design and the major issue expected with the flight unit integration. Carbon dioxide flow control is the major area requiring development since the size of the CO2 accumulator may result in periods of CRA starvation. The capability of the CO2 flow control algorithm to effectively manage integrated CRA operations is discussed in detail.
Meta TagsDetails
DOI
https://doi.org/10.4271/2003-01-2496
Pages
8
Citation
Murdoch, K., Perry, J., and Smith, F., "Sabatier Engineering Development Unit," SAE Technical Paper 2003-01-2496, 2003, https://doi.org/10.4271/2003-01-2496.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Jul 7, 2003
Product Code
2003-01-2496
Content Type
Technical Paper
Language
English