Martian Liquid CO2 and Metabolic Heat Regenerated Temperature Swing Adsorption for Portable Life Support Systems

• Main Authors: Iacomini, Christine, MacCallum, Taber, Morin, Tom, Straub-Lopez, Kathrine, Paul, Heather
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0094-243X
• DOI: 10.1063/1.2437527

Two of the fundamental problems facing the development of a Portable Life Support System (PLSS) for use on Mars, are (i) heat rejection (because traditional technologies use sublimation of water, which wastes a scarce resource and contaminates the premises), and (ii) rejection of CO2 in an environment with a ppCO2 of 0.4-0.9 kPa. This paper presents a conceptual system for CO2 collection, compression, and cooling to produce sub-critical (liquid) CO2. A first order estimate of the system mass and energy to condense and store liquid CO2 outside at Mars ambient temperature at 600 kPa is discussed. No serious technical hurdles were identified and it is likely that better overall performance would be achieved if the system were part of an integrated ISRU strategy rather than a standalone system. Patent-pending Metabolic heat regenerated Temperature Swing Adsorption (MTSA) technology for CO2 removal from a PLSS vent loop, where the Martian liquid CO2 is used as the heat sink is developed to utilize the readily available liquid CO2. This paper will describe the technology and present data in support of its design.