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Completed TRL 3 (started at 3, targeting 4)
Ionic liquids (ILs) potentially have great utility for use in NASA relevant gas purification and separation processes, such as CO2 removal from cabin air or the purification of lunar cold volatiles. The most significant technical obstacle to the adoption of IL-based technologies is the low rate of gas adsorption into ILs due to poor mass transfer kinetics. A solution to this problem is to maximize the surface area to volume ratio, which can easily be accomplished by aerosolizing the IL. Unfortunately in microgravity, there is no simple method by which to collect the IL mist. We propose to solve this problem by developing a system that aerosolizes paramagnetic ILs (PILs), which are ILs that respond to the application of magnetic fields, and controls the distribution and recovery of the IL mist using static and/or time variant magnets. In such a system, a magnetic field would replace gravity as the force driving droplet collection and aggregation. These PILs would be functionalized to have a high affinity for CO2.
The current SotA for CO2 capture is the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA). While CDRA has a long history of use on ISS, it cannot meet the more stringent limit for CO2 levels that has been established for future deep space missions. Additionally, the zeolite bed is prone to dusting and requires regular replacement, while the CO2 removal is also a batch process which requires additional hardware mass to store the CO2 prior to processing for the recovery of O2. In contrast, a PIL sorbent will be highly stable over long durations, limiting the resupply mass required for ECLS. A PIL based separation process will provide a continuous stream of CO2 to the O2 recovery system. Non-paramagnetic ILs are a topic of substantial study for CO2 capture, but their use in a microgravity environment is technically challenging. As the mass transport of CO2 can be slow, it is necessary to have a high liquid-gas contact area. One way to do this is an aerosol, but a lack of gravity driven droplet settling makes the recovery of aerosols challenging. Many groups have studied the use of membrane contractors, which do work well, but the use of said membranes increases the total mass of the CO2 capture system.
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