Browsing by Author "Toro Medina, Jaime"
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Item Microgravity Experimentation of Long Duration Space Mission Waste Conversion(49th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2019-07-07) Shah, Malay; Meier, Anne; Toro Medina, JaimeThe NASA Orbital Syngas / Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR) project is a 2 year project that aims to reduce risk of a space waste conversion system by demonstrating a microgravity reactor to advance NASA’s Trash-to-Gas efforts for mission waste reduction and conversion. On long duration deep space missions, humanity will be required to increase sustainability and efficiency on missions, which can be done by effectively managing logistical waste. The reuse of discarded materials on a long duration, deep space mission will reduce overall mission mass, increase usable spacecraft and habitat volume and improve mission reliability and robustness. On a 1 year mission, a four person crew will produce approximately 2,500 kg of waste materials consisting of food packaging, used clothing, hygiene items, human waste, life support system supplies, and other crew supplies. Repurposed waste can be safely vented off of a spacecraft in the form of an inert gas or useful material can be recovered such as fuel, air, water, and even feedstocks for spacecraft construction and repair. This paper will discuss the project development and results regarding the demonstration of a test article that will undergo microgravity tests at NASA’s 2.2-second Drop Tower, the Zero Gravity Research Facility, and on a several-minute commercial suborbital flight. Waste processing reactors will behave differently in reduced gravity with regards to the thermochemical process (ex: combustion), gas mixing, drying, solid entrainment behavior, and ash formation. The behavior of these situations in microgravity will be observed with OSCAR and results will be used to decide the appropriate method to model the system and to help guide the design of how air – or other oxidant – should be introduced into the hearth zone for optimum material conversion.Item Space Mission Waste Conversion Experiments at the Zero Gravity Facility(2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems, 2020-07-31) Meier, Anne; Shah, Malay; Toro Medina, Jaime; Rinderknecht, David; Pitts, RayHumans are required to increase sustainability and efficiency on missions, which can be done in part by effectively managing logistical waste. Repurposed waste can be safely vented in the form of an inert gas off of a spacecraft, or useful material can be recovered, such as syngas (propellant), air, water, raw material for construction and repair feedstocks or replacement parts. The NASA Orbital Syngas / Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR) project has completed a 2 and 5 second microgravity test campaign at the Glenn Research Center Drop Tower and Zero Gravity Facility to demonstrate combustion and steam reforming for waste to gas technologies. The project continues to investigate thermochemical conversion of logistical space mission trash to a gas for venting or reuse. This paper discusses the project advancements since the 2 second Drop Tower testing in 2018 and provides updated results from the 5 second Zero Gravity Facility experimentation in 2019. Trash injection, inlet reaction gas flow direction, heat transfer, ignition, combustion and mixed waste streams in a microgravity environment are investigated. Benchtop tests were performed to highlight the behavioral discrepancies of OSCAR within gravity and microgravity environments, which was the primary purpose of this work. Overall results are used to decide the appropriate method to model the system, help guide the design of how air, or other oxidant, should be introduced into the hearth zone for optimum material conversion, and assist in the next design phase for a suborbital flight demonstration. The work in this report presents the 5 second microgravity test campaign data with gravity data for space mission trash items, reactor design iterations, preheat temperature and trash ignition conditions.Item Suborbital Testing of the OSCAR Trash-to-Gas System(51st International Conference on Environmental Systems, 7/10/2022) Pitts, Ray; Meier, Anne; Olson, Joel; Shah, Malay; Rinderknecht, David; Toro Medina, JaimeWith the sustained human exploration of nearby celestial bodies on the horizon, a renewed outlook on waste management must be realized. Current waste management strategies aboard the International Space Station become impractical as we venture further away from low Earth orbit and the resources that can be extracted from waste streams are substantial. One method of combatting this issue is by thermally degrading solid and liquid crew waste items into a chemically inert, ventable gas stream, a process known as Trash-to-Gas. The Orbital Syngas/Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR) is the state-of-the-art Trash-to-Gas system which has been designed to explore microgravity Trash-to-Gas concepts for improved mass/volume reduction and resource recovery from waste. OSCAR is a subscale testbed design that supports the NASA Logistics Reduction (LR) project under the Advanced Exploration System (AES) Program and Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Flight Opportunities Program to determine the feasibility of Trash-to-Gas technology for use on future long duration space missions. OSCAR has flown on two suborbital flight demonstrations aboard Blue Origin�s New Shepard launch vehicle. This paper presents an overarching comparative analysis of these microgravity test campaigns with 1g laboratory experimentation. Percent gasification, product gas composition, soot and water production, reactor temperature and pressure, trash injection methodology, and system automation are compared to highlight the operational discrepancies within the microgravity environment for future optimization. The OSCAR system design progression and up-to-date lessons learned are also discussed for consideration into follow-on human spaceflight mission architectures.