The proposed technology will be used to treat waste-water onboard the ISS to enable improved durability and efficient reduction of contaminants that cause membrane fouling or performance degradation. We anticipate delivery of prototype units to NASA in Phase III for additional longer-term testing, including more extensive zero-gravity testing or experimentation onboard ISS. Once validation is complete and TRL 9 has been achieved, the bio-electrochemical units may be delivered to ISS via entities such as SpaceX and Orbital ATK. Upon successful implementation at ISS, this technology could be combined within the next generation ECLSS architectures and utilized on future man missions to Mars.
The primary customer is NASA, but humanitarian initiative to improve water utilization and recovery could be an invaluable to the world’s population. Some potential installation/sales targets include naval warships and military field hospitals. In 2015 United Nations reported that more than 40% of global population is affected by water scarcity and this number continues to increase. For this reason, water recovery from waste water is essential to human race. The proposed innovation thus has the potential to be useful in regions where water is scarce commodity or water recovery would be invaluable. The proposed system is envisioned to be an add-on to existing osmosis technology that could reduce cost/maintenance of the osmotic components.
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