Advanced Supported Liquid Membranes for CO2 Control in EVA Applications

The development of new, robust, lightweight systems for CO2 removal during EVA is a crucial need for NASA. With current and anticipated space activities, mission times will need to be extended without increasing the size and weight of the portable life support system (PLSS). While much of the recent work on the development of new CO2 control strategies has centered on solid sorbents that can be regenerated during the mission, these system add "on back" hardware, increasing weight and complexity, and reducing reliability. A simpler approach is to use a membrane system to separate CO2 from the O2 environment. Unfortunately, separating gas phase molecules with the needed selectivity is difficult with standard membranes. However, identifying a low vapor pressure liquid sorbent that will react with CO2 to form a meta stable product, could facilitate the needed separation. Therefore in this Phase I project, Reaction Systems will develop a supported liquid membrane that will have high permeance and selectivity for CO2 compared to O2, advancing the TRL from 1 to 4 by the end of the Phase I. In Phase II we will design and construct a full scale prototype, which will be delivered it to NASA. More »