Novel Vapor Chambers for Heating and Cooling of Advanced Sorption Systems

The Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) is a subassembly of the Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) system on the International Space Station (ISS). The function of the CDRA is to remove CO2 from cabin air, ideally turning it into a useful resource such as water or methane. This is accomplished using a sorbent material, zeolite, to adsorb and desorb CO2. Zeolite has a highly porous molecular structure, and CO2 can favorably bond within these pores at certain temperatures and pressures. This molecular bonding process is exothermic during CO2 adsorption and endothermic during CO2 desorption. Thus, the zeolite material on the CDRA must be heated and cooled to very specific temperatures for the most efficient desorption and adsorption of CO2, respectively. The current CDRA operates most effectively when the sorbent bed is cooled to 20C for adsorption and heated to 220C for desorption. The zeolite material has poor heat transfer characteristics, making a well-designed thermal management system a priority on the CDRA. Advanced Cooling Technologies (ACT) has developed an additively manufactured (AM), titanium-water, vapor chamber to heat and cool the zeolite material in the CDRA. ACTs proposed thermal management system is designed to heat and cool the zeolite to these specific temperatures at faster rates and more uniformly than the state-of-the-art design, which utilizes a cartridge heater and aluminum fin. ACTs titanium water vapor chamber design has additional benefits over the state-of-the-art such as reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) and adaptability to future sorbent materials. ACT has developed a vapor chamber to offer an improved thermal management system for the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) on the International Space Station (ISS). The CDRA has been in operation for over 30 years, and some main issues during its lifetime are power usage, zeolite dusting, and nonuniform heating and cooling of the sorbent material. ACT’s developed vapor chambers directly address each of these issues. By combining the heating and cooling mode into one device, the power usage of the system decreases, and there is less volume taken up in the sorbent area. To mitigate any formation of zeolite dust, the vapor chamber is designed to slot into a 3D-printed sorbent bed. This avoids manufacturing processes that create zeolite dust, such as fitting zeolite beads into slots between mesh heat spreading plates. Lastly, the vapor chamber fins are isothermal, compared to the solid metal fins used previously with a high temperature difference. This enables the sorbent material to maintain a uniform temperature throughout, and thus more efficient CO2 adsorption and desorption. In the Phase II program, ACT proposes to design, fabricate, and test a vapor chamber prototype with an updated wick design. Based on lesson learned from the prototype, ACT will then design, fabricate, and test a full-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) bed with integrated vapor chambers. In addition, ACT proposes to develop a detailed CFD model of the air flow through the sorbent bed, to model the temperature distribution with the proposed thermal management system. The main objective of the proposed work is to demonstrate an improvement in ramp up rates and temperature uniformity of the full-scale bed with vapor chambers over the current operating CDRA sorbent bed. The full scale CDRA bed with integrated vapor chambers will be a final deliverable to NASA, in addition to all of the required quarterly, midterm, and final reports.

The proposed vapor chambers are applicable to the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly, which is a subset of the Environmental Control and Life Support System on the International Space Station. The vapor chambers will be used to heat and cool the sorbent material to sequester CO2 from the cabin air on the ISS. The vapor chambers may also be applicable to future manned missions to lunar or Martian surfaces, such as those proposed under NASA’s Space Launch System. These vapor chambers are designed to heat and cool sorbent material to adsorb/desorb CO2, thus can find non-NASA applications in any application using a similar sorbent material. This could be direct air capture systems, CO2 capture systems in coal and power plants, or certain air filtration systems.

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