Development of Carbon Dioxide Removal Systems for Advanced Exploration Systems 2012-2013

摘要

The Atmosphere Revitalization Recovery and Environmental Monitoring (ARREM) project was initiated in September of 2011 as part of the Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) program. Under the ARREM project, CO_2 removal and associated air drying efforts are focused on improving the current state-of-the-art systems utilizing fixed beds of sorbent pellets by seeking more robust pelletized sorbents, evaluating structured sorbents, and examining alternate bed configurations to improve system efficiency and reliability. These development efforts combine sorbent screening and characterization, testing of sub-scale and full-scale systems, and multi-physics computer simulations to evaluate candidate approaches, select the best performing options, and optimize the configuration of the selected approach. The selected subsystem is then implemented in a full-scale integrated atmosphere revitalization test. This paper describes the carbon dioxide removal hardware design and sorbent screening and characterization effort in support of the ARREM project within the AES program. The development of CO_2 removal and associated air-drying subsystem models and simulations under the ARREM project is discussed in a companion paper.