Technical Risks Associated with Heat Melt Compaction Systems
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Abstract
The processing of trash and waste is a welcome and valuable addition to humans living and working in space. Besides the obvious desire to have a pleasant and productive habitation environment, trash management has many practical benefits for crew health, resource recovery, and volume reclamation through garbage compaction. The Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS), which is a NASA project to develop a trash processing system for long-duration spaceflight, is currently undergoing concept development with engineering prototype validation through two contracted efforts. The development efforts are being supported with activities associated with the NASA Generation 2 Heat Melt Compactor (HMC). The HMC is a facility that compacts trash, recovers water, heats the trash to eliminate biological activity, and manages gas and vapor effluents. The resulting residual processed trash is a compact tile that is free of biological growth and that can be used for augmenting radiation shields. The work being conducted with the HMC focuses on high risk technical areas with respect to operations, sub-system performance, and ISS effluent management interface requirements. This paper gives an overview of the technical risks and the current use of the HMC as a facility for reducing risk.
Description
Tra-My Justine Richardson, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC), US
Kevin Martin, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center (ARC), US
Janine Young, KBRwyle, US
Gregory Pace, KBRwyle, US
Jurek Parodi, Bionetics Corporation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US
Serena Trieu, Logyx LLC, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US
Ben Helvensteijn, Millennium Engineering & Integration Company, Atlas Scientific, US
Michael Ewert, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Johnson Space Center, US
ICES304: Physio-Chemical Life Support- Waste Management Systems- Technology and Process Development
The proceedings for the 2020 International Conference on Environmental Systems were published from July 31, 2020. The technical papers were not presented in person due to the inability to hold the event as scheduled in Lisbon, Portugal because of the COVID-19 global pandemic.