Ionic Liquids Enabling Revolutionary Closed-Loop Life Support

The innovation is to utilize ionic liquids with the Bosch process to achieve closed-loop life support. Specific tasks are to: 1) Advance the technology readiness of a proposed oxygen recovery life support technology to TRL 3, 2) To generate the data necessary to scale the proposed technology, and 3) To generate a system concept and basic designs.

Development of a revolutionary implementation of the Bosch process using ionic liquids (IL) that can theoretically achieve 100% oxygen recovery save over a ton of mass resupply over a 3-year Martian surface mission. Life Support systems for long duration life support must be highly reliable, robust against environmentally-induced failures, and require limited resupply and crew interaction. An oxygen recovery system on ISS recovers ~50% of the oxygen from this CO2 and recycles it back to the crew, thereby reducing the required resupply of O2 from Earth. Future missions will require a minimum of 75% oxygen recovery with a target of >90% oxygen recovery from metabolic CO2 to limit resupply mass and logistical requirements.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

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