MELiSSA Pilot Plant: integration of compartments in a regenerative life support system
Abstract
MELiSSA (Micro Ecological Life Support System Alternative) is developing regenerative Life Support technologies for long-term Space missions. The MELiSSA loop is conceived as a loop with several compartments, each one performing a specific function, providing all together the basic functions in life support: food production, atmosphere regeneration, water recovery and wastes treatment. The MELiSSA Pilot Plant is a facility designed for the terrestrial demonstration of this concept, hosting laboratory rats as a crew mimicking the respiration of humans. The development of the Pilot Plant has completed the individual work on its compartments and it is now following with the connection of them in continuous and controlled operation, in consecutive steps, involving liquid, solid and gas phases, targeting to the completion of the proposed loop. Current activities are focused on the integration of three compartments: Compartment 3 (nitrifying packed-bed bioreactor based on the co-culture of immobilized Nitrosomonas winogradsky and Nitrobacter europaea), compartment 4a (an air-lift photobioreactor for the culture of the edible cyanobacteriaLimnospira indica with concomitant oxygen production) and Compartment 5 (an animal isolator with rats as mock-up crew). The output from several continuous operation and long-term integration experiments under controlled conditions will be reported, providing especial emphasis in the complex gas management dynamics between the three compartments and its control in continuous operation. The system showed high robustness and reliability over long operation periods (several months) and the coordinated performance of oxygen producing and oxygen consuming compartments has been achieved under transitory and steady-state conditions. Keywords: ECLSS, MELiSSA, Pilot Plant, Integration, continuous operation, bioreactors, control, Limnospira indica, Nitrosomonas europaea, Nitrobacter winogradskyi
- Publication:
-
43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 28 January - 4 February
- Pub Date:
- January 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021cosp...43E2019G