There are two major areas for commercial application of the RBR technology. The first area concerns the mitigation of carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. In this case, industrial processes can be retrofitted with a RBR system that converts carbon dioxide to a collectable solid, carbon, and a harmless gas, water vapor. The second commercialization area concerns reactor technology, and in particular, applications where catalyst fouling by reaction byproducts are a significant concern. As such, the RBR design can be modified to accommodate a variety of catalysts used in a variety of reactions and reactors. The NASA application for this technology will be as Flight Hardware for deployment in support of future, long duration exploration objectives beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where efficient, reliable, low ESM atmospheric revitalization to reduce logistics burden for ECLSS hardware. The Regenerative Bosch Reactor (RBR) technology provides a simple, microgravity compatible method to continuously recover oxygen from carbon dioxide without the loss of the hydrogen reductant or degradation of process efficiency. The complete recovery of hydrogen will lower the ESM for this technology compared to Sabatier reaction based methods. Moreover, long-term Bosch reactor operation with the concomitant lowering of hydrogen resupply penalties will favor this approach in future atmospheric revitalization systems used aboard spacecraft and within extraterrestrial habitats.
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