Biological treatment of transit mission waste stream

Date

2004-12

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Publisher

Texas Tech University

Abstract

The waste stream on the space mission is recycled to get the potable water. To recover the waste stream, biological (packed-bed and aerated membrane biological reactor) methods are used. Nitrificafion takes place in aerated membrane reactor and denitrification takes place in the packed-bed. The waste stream on space mission is divided into three types based on the technology expected to be available during space missions. The three types of waste streams are transit mission waste stream, early surface mission waste stream, and mature surface mission waste stream. Transit mission waste stream consists of urine, DDI water, and humidity condensate. Little work has been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the biological treatment of the urine-humidity condensate waste stream.

The objectives of this experiment are 50 percent ammonium removal and 95 percent DOC removal. In this experiment four HRTs are used. The objectives of this experiment were met and the performance of the system is not only related to the adequacy of the reactor but also to characteristics of waste stream. Denitrification is limited by DOC and nitrification is kinetically limited. Therefore, to improve the biological treatment efficiency, either DOC or HRT should be increased

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