The International Space Station is set to test a new life support system that concentrates on closing the waste-water cycle on spaceships.
The name of the project is Environmental Control and Life Support Systems–better known by its acronym ECLSS (pronounced”EE-cliss”). ECLSS uses a purification process called vapor compression distillation: urine is boiled until the water in it turns to steam. The system is designed to produce potable water “meeting purity standards better than most municipal water systems on the ground.”
ECLSS can only recover about 93% of waste water that humans sweat and urinate away, so an even better system that can achieve 100% efficiency is needed for a Mars or other space missions to be completely self contained. Without sci-fi matter replicators, even waste water is a precious resource when you’re millions of kilometers away from a water supply.
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bigcitylib | 01-Nov-06 at 8:07 am | Permalink
On land on that frozen ocean they’ve found.
Although that has its own problems. Filtration, for one thing.