Study of Oxygen Generation System for Space Application

Non-regenerative carbon dioxide (CO2) removal system, oxygen (O2) gas storage system, and other consumables have been utilized for the past short-term environmental control system on orbit because of the advantages of system weight, electric power consumption, system reliability, and so forth. However, to sustain long-term manned activity, regenerative resource recycle systems should be essential to reduce the quantity and frequency of resupply from the Earth.

O2 generation system (OGS) is indispensable to this resource recycle systems and water electrolysis technology is considered to be suitable for near future space applications. The authors have been studying OGS since 1985 concerning a new solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) and simplified cell structure.

This paper describes OGS development status and results of preliminary experiments.