Browsing by Author "Petrie, Zachary"

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    Design & Testing of a Catalytic Oxidizer for Cleaning of Hazardous Compounds in the Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) Effluent Gas
    (2024 International Conference on Environmnetal Systems, 2024-07-21) Klopotic, Joe; Shakouri, Nate ; Petrie, Zachary ; Coleman, Brynne; Wetzel, John ; Moffatt, Sam ;
    The Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) being developed for long duration space missions compresses, safens, and dries crew-generated standard trash, recovers and recycles water, and manages gaseous effluent produced during trash processing. As the trash is processed at elevated temperatures, it emits gaseous effluent containing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and other complex gaseous contaminants which evolve from the trash load. To conserve valuable resources during flight these gases are managed and recycled to reduce consumable losses. A Catalytic Oxidizer (CatOx) was developed by Sierra Space to treat this contaminated gas and render it safe for reintroduction into the cabin environment. VOCs are catalytically decomposed at high temperatures using a specially synthesized proprietary catalyst. Resulting gas outflows can be safely released into the cabin atmosphere, or through other downstream systems. The TCPS CatOx is functional at diverse pressure ranges and can be readily adopted for other trace contaminant control applications in spaceflight. Testing using representative contaminants was conducted to characterize and quantify the performance of the CatOx in support of the TCPS flight hardware development, with discussion of performance measures including destruction efficiency, thermal performance, and suitability for integration with other life-support systems.
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    Design of a Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) for Waste Management and Logistics Reduction in Long Duration Spaceflight
    (2023 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2023-07-16) Klopotic, Joseph; Wyman, Daniel; Petrie, Zachary; Wetzel, John
    The Trash Compaction & Processing System (TCPS) being developed by Sierra Space for long duration missions compresses, sterilizes, and recycles water from crew-generated standard trash. TCPS assists in solving complex logistical challenges for spaceflight by reducing needed volume for trash storage and consumable launch mass. Functions include compressing the waste into a more manageable tile, sterilizing the tile, recovering and recycling water from the waste, and the processing and cleaning of any gaseous byproducts. Sierra Space has leveraged our previous developmental systems to develop an integrated TCPS for use in the International Space Station (ISS) as a technology demonstration for future long-duration missions and capabilities. Numerous interfaces and systems onboard ISS will be used to verify the capabilities of TCPS for operation in future vehicles and missions, where resources in cooling, water management, and gas release may differ. This paper summarizes the design of the TCPS flight system, the concept of operations, and requirements of the flight system