A Trade-off Study of the Spacecraft Carbon Dioxide Management System using the Analytical Hierarchy Process

A Carbon Dioxide Management System (CMS) trade study was conducted to compare the Sabatier Assembly Compressor (SAC) used on the International Space Station (ISS) with the Air-Cooled Temperature Swing Compression System (AC-TSAC) and the Thermally-Coupled TSAC(TC-TSAC). The Analytical Hiearchy Process (AHP) was used to evaluate the systems based on the following criteria: carbon dioxide (CO2(g)) process capacity, safety, reliability, in-flight maintainability, volume, mass, power, heat rejection, technology readiness level (TRL) and cost. The trade study results showed that for both the gateway and the Mars missions, the TC-TSAC is the favored technology compared to the AC-TSAC and the SAC.