Radiation-Based Water Recycling System Configuration for a Crewed Exploration Vehicle(CEV)

Adan Amarillas

            Current water filtration systems that support human presence in space, such as the ones in the International Space Station, are expensive and difficult to implement onto smaller spacecraft. A water purification process using solar radiation has been proposed as an alternative that can reduce this cost. This research, explores the design of a CEV that uses a radiation-based recycling water system. In this concept waste water is exposed to solar radiation to sterilize and breakdown harmful chemicals to simplify the post-processing of the water for reuse. This project explores various configurations of the water exposure system as it would be integrated in the CEV. Material selection and system configuration are derived based on the vacuum, radiation and MMOD (Micro-Meteorites and Orbital Debris) environments only. The system is modeled using CAD and its feasibility is tested by FEA analysis. The successful design of this system could further enable crewed missions beyond Low Earth Orbits.