SustainSpace 2016 Fundraising Campaign
SustainSpace has kicked off its 2016 Fundraising Campaign. This campaign will provide funding to new writers and seed grants to students and others who are working on related products. Help SustainSpace continue the mission to promote sustainability and space. Donate here today!
Global Village Construction Set
Open Source Ecology’s Global Village Construction Set provides a “modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts.” An important point about machine tools is that they are a sort of ecosystem, where the various tools are used in combination to build each other. For example, a lathe can be used to make many of the components required for a milling machine, and vice versa. This construction set is also open source.
This is analogous to a closed-loop life support system, where the “waste” from one component can provide essential material for processing in other components. For example and animal produces CO2 which is essential of plants, and plants provide O2 which is essential for animals. Other components of this ecology of life include water and nitrogen flows and transformations.
Perhaps there should be a set of open source components of closed-loop life support systems? Standards could be established so that major components could interface with each other. Likewise, components could be interchangeable, so that different parties could work in parallel on different approaches to each component.
Distribution of some existing technologies are controlled by ITAR and patents, but alternatives could be created that do not. Further, different versions of the components could be developed for space versus Earth use, but they still could be subject to interconnectivity standards.
Note: “closed-loop” really means nearly closed-loop. There still would need to be energy inputs and a waste heat output.
Water Recovery System (credit: NASA)
Water is essential for human survival on Earth and in space. A typical person requires between 3.5 to 15 liters per day. Yet launching large quantities of water up to the International Space Station (ISS) is terribly expensive, and would be a major impediment to future space settlement. So NASA has made water recycling a vital part of closing the life support “loop”. Meanwhile, water is often in short supply even on the Earth, especially in a clean, drinkable form.
Russia’s space station Mir recycled cosmonaut sweat. An earlier NASA method of water re-use involved separating waste water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen could be used for breathing and thus reduce the amount of oxygen that needed to be transported to ISS (NASA 2008).
NASA’s current water recycling system on ISS is the Water Recovery System (WRS), part of the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS). WRS water purification machines on the ISS cleanse wastewater in a three-step process. WRS first filters out particles and debris. Then, urine is processed though vapour compression distillation (VCD), while humidity condensate passes through multi-filtration beds to remove organic and inorganic impurities.
Products of the vapour and multi-filtration are mixed together and passed to a catalytic oxidation reactor that removes volatile organic compounds (VOC) and kills bacteria and viruses” (Carter at al. 2008). This system is designed to recycle about 90% of ISS waste water. ISS occupants are supplied with hydrated food that makes up the remaining 10%.
(credit: Watertech International)
Similar technology is also being used in the field. Waterlife International produces a unit for local use. They have engaged in projects in Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Cambodia. They are in talks to supply a provincial government in South Africa. Also see the Water Security Corporation.
To do even better, the Alternative Water Processor (AWP) is currently being developed by NASA’s Next Generation Life Support Project, under the Game Changing Development Program. It will support a crew of four each with 11 liters of water per day on a long-duration space flight mission. On such missions, food will likely be freeze-dried rather than hydrated, so it will not be available as a source of water. Hence, the newer AWP must have an even higher recovery rate than the older WRS.
AWP has a membrane-aerated bioreactor to destroy organic contaminate and a forward osmosis secondary treatment (FOST) system to remove dissolved solids. FOST uses saltwater as the drawing solution, then reverse osmosis is used to remove the salt, according to Michael Flynn, a research engineer at the NASA Ames Research Center. (Also see NASA 2013)
FOST water processor (image credit NASA)
Construction of the first generation FOST was recently completed at the NASA Ames Research Center. The system recently shipped to the NASA’s Johnson Space Center. FOST will undergo integrated testing with the membrane-aerated bioreactor, designed by Texas Tech University and constructed by NASA Johnson Space Center. (NASA 2013)
“Inside the water recovery system is an evolving set of technologies with great promise,” said Flynn. “Ultimately, these systems will continue to evolve and become increasingly more complex, integrated and smaller.” (NASA 2013) The new system has two major advantages. First, it allows for 95% recycling of waste water. Part of this improvement is due to the use of bioreactor to treat urine, which will avoid the need for highly toxic chromic acid. Second, the new system also processes a higher volume of waste water, so that crew will be able to engage in a greater range of water usage, such as hand-washing and laundry. Also, this new system is lighter, takes up less space and requires less energy per gallon processed, so it is better-suited for long-duration missions.
Sustainability Base water recycling system
NASA’s FOST system is already finding use on Earth. NASA researchers installed a larger version of FOST in its Sustainability Base, which in combination with other water-saving technologies integrated into the building, is expected to reduce greywater consumption by more than 90 percent. (Total tap water usage is reduced by 40%.) Flynn points out that additional capabilities of FOST in the Sustainability Base include the ability to do long duration testing and failure prediction. It is certainly safer to do this on Earth than in space.
NASA’s next step may take inspiration from living systems, according to Flynn. Biomimicry is a form of engineering that imitates living systems. For example, in the human body, the small intestine is a highly efficient water absorption and filtering system that works reliably for many decades. It is also self-repairing. NASA is looking towards designing a system that emulates the positive qualities of the small intestine.
Knowing a few terms can help understand NASA’s technology. Water is typically recycled from several sources. Greywater is waste water from showers and sinks, and can include water from humidity. Blackwater contains fecal matter and urine, such as from toilets. Reverse osmosis (RO) uses physical pressure to push water through a filter. In contrast, forward osmosis (FO) draws water through a filter using an ionic medium such as sugar or salt water, and has several advantages, such as reduced pore clogging.
Veggie plant growth chamber (NASA/Bryan Onate)
A transparent plastic growth chamber bound for the International Space Station on the SpaceX-3 resupply mission may help expand in-orbit food production capabilities, and offer astronauts fresh produce.
NASA’s Veg-01 experiment will be used to study the in-orbit function and performance of a new expandable plant growth facility called Veggie. Veggie is a low-cost plant growth chamber that uses a flat-panel light bank that includes red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and crew observation. Veggie’s unique design is collapsible for transport and storage and expandable up to a foot and a half as plants grow inside it. The roots and nutrients for the plant are contained in plant “pillows”. The investigation will focus on the growth and development of “Outredgeous” lettuce seedlings in the microgravity environment.
Outredgeous romaine lettuce (NASA/Gioia Massa)
“Veggie will provide a new resource for U.S. astronauts and researchers as we begin to develop the capabilities of growing fresh produce and other large plants on the space station,” said Gioia Massa, NASA payload scientist for Veggie. “Determining food safety is one of our primary goals for this validation test.”
Orbital Technologies Corporation (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wis., developed Veggie through a Small Business Innovative Research Program. NASA and ORBITEC engineers and collaborators at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida worked to get the unit’s hardware flight-certified for use on the space station.
As NASA moves toward long-duration exploration missions, Massa hopes that Veggie will be a resource for crew food growth and consumption. It also could be used by astronauts for recreational gardening activities during long-duration space missions. The system may have implications for improving growth and biomass production on Earth, thus benefiting the average citizen.
Plants have been grown in space before, but there never has been a system that has regularly provided a supply of produce to astronauts, not even in small quantities. According to a NASA source, part of the problem is that ISS cabin level CO2 levels are excessively high for plants to survive, despite that plants convert CO2 to oxygen. Another problem may be that cabin humidity is too low. Interestingly, the Orbitec system not only protects plants from the cabin atmosphere (via the collapsible transparent plastic chamber), but it also isolates the plant roots in a second envelope of plastic. Orbitec sells a low-tech version of this space garden for terrestrial experimentation, which may be suitable for school science faire projects.
xhab1 ( photo credit: Space Grant)
The eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) 2015 Academic Innovation Challenge is a university-level competition involving hands-on design, research, development, and manufacture of functional prototypical subsystems for space habitats and deep space exploration missions. The Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Exploration Augmentation Module (EAM) project will offer multiple X-Hab awards of $10k – $20k each.
NASA will benefit from the challenge by sponsoring the development of innovative concepts and technologies from universities, which will result in innovative ideas and solutions that could be applied to exploration.
University teams will design and produce functional products of interest to the EAM project according to their interests and expertise. The prototypes produced by the university teams may be integrated onto existing NASA-built operational prototypes. Universities may collaborate together on a project team.
For more information, see: http://www.spacegrant.org/xhab
The Earth Organisation for Sustainability (EOS) is building a geodesic biodome near the edge of the Arctic Circle, with the goal of self-sufficient food production. EOS has received an European Union grant of 34,000 € delivered by URnära, for construction materials and initial wages, and is working with Green Free Will.
Galileo Ground Station, Esrange Space Centre, Kiruna, Sweden
The EOS is developing both technology and social systems for self-sufficent communities of the future. So the Biodome can provide lessons for developing space settlements, such as on Mars. Umeå is in Northern Sweden, just a few hundred kilometres from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna. Though Umeå is not as far north as the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station near Resolute, Canada, sunlight is in short supply much of the year, and temperatures can get as cold as -38C (-36 F).
Miniature model of Biodome frame
The Biodome will simulate an entire eco-system, with an artificial river floor filled with small aquatic animals (for aquaponics), and a plant bed where vegetables, fruits and beans will be grown. A computerised regulation system will adjust climate conditions, atmosphere, bacteria levels, nitrate levels and water levels, to maintain a dynamic equilibrium.
EOS is also exploring new social and economic systems to further enhance the sustainability of future communities. Energy accounting is being developed to ensure equitable, durable utilisation of resources, while a somewhat libertarian “holonic” system of governance helps to maximise the freedom of inhabitants. Working with extremely limited resources (at least initially) while maximising individual freedom will certainly be a significant challenge for space settlements.
Mars Desert Research Station with greenhouse
This begs the question of further opportunities for synergy between space settlement and sustainability activists. Both communities are working towards developing small-scale self-sufficient prototype communities on Earth. They may look a lot different, but share a great deal in their aims.
EOS blog post on Biodome: http://eoshorizon.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/the-biodome-project-2014/
Project website (updated): https://enggreenfreewill.wordpress.com/geodesic-dome/gallery/
The Sustainable Silicon Valley call for solutions deadline has been extended to January 15, 2014. This is an opportunity to showcase your own sustainability solutions at the WEST (Water, Energy, and Smart Technology) Summit/Showcase to be held on May 22, 2014 at Stanford University.
Last year’s finalists included several space-related ventures, such as AstroSolar, Spaceship Earth Mission Control, and International Centre for Earth Simulation. The 2014 call includes various problems that could benefit from space technology, such as “How will food be produced as climate worsens?” and “Clean Water Production and Deliver under condition of scarcity?”
Websites:
NASA Sustainability Base courtyard
NASA Ames Sustainability Base wins a 2013 GEELA Award for the category of Sustainable Practices or Facilities. The GEELA Program, which stands for Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, is run by the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA).
NASA’s first sustainable space “settlement” is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, at the NASA Ames Research Center in California. “Using NASA innovations originally engineered for space travel and exploration, the 50,000 square-foot, lunar-shaped Sustainability Base is simultaneously a working office space, a showcase for NASA technology and an evolving exemplar for the future of buildings.” (Ames website). Through a combination of NASA innovations and commercial technologies, Sustainability Base leaves virtually no footprint.
In 2007, NASA held a ‘Renovation by Replacement’ (RbR) competition designed to replace antiquated and inefficient buildings with new, energy-efficient buildings. NASA Ames Associate Director, Steve Zornetzer was inspired by sustainability architect Bill McDonough to apply the closed-loop thinking that NASA uses in space exploration to a green building on Earth.
Sustainability Base is one of the greenest Federal buildings ever constructed. Although Sustainability Base isn’t a spacecraft, it was created with the vision that everything about the design would support both human and planetary well-being. As NASA Ames Center Director Pete Worden says, “This tiny planet we share is our only home.”
The building also generates generates most the power it needs through a variety of photovoltaics (solar panels), a highly efficient fuel cell and a small wind turbine. NASA spinoff Bloom Energy provided the advanced fuel cell.
Arial view of NASA Sustainability Base
Sustainability Base uses uses 90 percent less potable (drinking) water than a traditional building of comparable size. NASA achieves this through use of a forward-osmosis water recycling system designed for use on the International Space Station.
Sustainability Base uses a sophisticated array of technology to go beyond being a “smart building” and move into the realm of the intuitive. The building can anticipate and react to changes in sunlight, temperature and usage, and will be able to optimize its performance automatically in response to internal and external change.
Those who work at Sustainability Base are an integral part of keeping the building sustainable. Each individual has a personal dashboard that shows their energy usage at any given moment and even suggests energy conservation activities, as simple as lowering the shades or opening windows.
NASA Sustainability Base |2013 GEELA Awards website