Characterization of Carbon Dioxide Removal using Ionic Liquids in Novel Geometries

The Cabin Atmosphere Revitalization through Ionic Liquids (CARIL) project is part of NASA's Exploration Systems and Habitation Academic Innovation Challenge program to provide enabling technologies for future long-duration space missions. Current atmosphere revitalization technologies require frequent maintenance and spare parts – these are not manageable issues for technologies used on missions travelling to Mars and beyond. As the possibility for resupply decreases with long-duration missions, regenerable technologies become increasingly important. CARIL is focused on the characterization of the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the cabin atmosphere using two different absorption bed configurations: a 3-D printed capillary-driven contactor and a hollow-fiber contactor. A flat plate contactor will be used as an experimental control, and all designs will use the ionic liquid (IL) 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate. ILs were chosen due to their low vapor pressure and selectivity between CO2 and oxygen, making them a viable option for absorbing CO2 in micro-gravity. The focus of this research is to characterize the absorption of CO2 using specific contactor materials and geometries to provide a broad range of data to analyze and inform the future development of supported ionic liquid membranes.