Design for waste water in space?
Design for waste water in space?
(OP)
How would the urine and feces of a long duration space voyage be treated. For example, to Mars and back. Would there be enough light and heat for biomass composting? How about for a 'generation ship' to, say Alpha Centari?





RE: Design for waste water in space?
Most of what constitutes feces is no longer of much value.
And before someone says that it's not environmentally friendly, just remember... space is a very big place.
PV
RE: Design for waste water in space?
Short term, dilution may be the solution by casting (pun intended) the feces into space, but for the longer duration flights a method of recovery and recycling needs to be found, I would say.
RE: Design for waste water in space?
on that long of a fligh5t the bio mass would be reused due to a few reasons one carbon is lost to us easting the plants and the feces would renew that 2 the nitrogen that is also found in feces would help the soil (since you will have to grow food for that long of a trip)
morgothia
RE: Design for waste water in space?
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RE: Design for waste water in space?
RE: Design for waste water in space?
I know that they have had filtration systems to recover urine as water for a long time.
I would think either process would have some unusable by products. At least I hope either process would have some unusable by products
RE: Design for waste water in space?
RE: Design for waste water in space?
How would you go about designing the system?
i.e. Would there be enough light and heat for biomass composting?
RE: Design for waste water in space?
This means enough electrical energy, so enough heat, light and specific impulse to accelerate the ship.
There is one more thing regarding the power after leaving atmosphere, and friction or aerdynamics are not issues any more, very very large solar pannels can be used to harvest the Sun's energy even at large distances from it.
RE: Design for waste water in space?
By the way you don't need light and heat for composting. You need oxygen to support aerobic microbial growth, and and a reasonably well insulated enclosure so that the biochemical reactions will raise the temp high enough to kill off pathogens, and a dehumidifier downstream to condense out the water produced by metabolism and evaporated off of the compost pile.
Someone asked about power. Any long term mission where the astronauts grow their own food will have a huge power plant because the electrical-energy-to-food energy yield under artificial lighting is something like 1-2%.
Rjeffery asked about recycling nitrogen and carbon from feces. Most of the nitrogen we eat goes out in the urine and most of the carbon, in CO2. It would be nice to recover it, but not necessary except for really long term missions or very large crews.