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A team of American researchers has developed a system to recycle astronauts’ urine by transforming it into water that they can then drink during long outdoor missions. This solution is directly inspired by the distillery of “Dune”, a suit for recovering and recycling water in a particularly arid environment.
Sofia Etlin, the researcher leading the project, admits to being a fan of Frank Herbert’s novel “Dune” and to having been loosely inspired by the stillsuit that allows the Fremen to collect and process moisture from their breath, sweat and urine and recycle the water. With her team at Cornell University, she has developed a suit that could be useful for future long-duration space missions.
Until now, astronauts have been using a maximum absorption garment, a kind of ultra-sophisticated diaper containing a super-absorbent polymer, which is uncomfortable and can even cause urinary tract infections. It is therefore appropriate to improve this technology in the context of future long missions, to the Moon or to Mars, where astronauts will be required to carry out long missions outside their base.
This new system takes the form of an undergarment with a collection cup directly connected to a filtration system that removes salt from urine and redirects the newly created water to an internal storage pocket. Urine is composed of approximately 95% water. It is therefore entirely possible to filter it to purify it and thus make it drinkable. However, the first prototype developed weighs nearly 8kg, requires a battery to operate and can purify half a liter of water in just five minutes.
This discovery was published in Frontiers in Space Technology. Note that it could also be practical on Earth, for firefighters or hikers for example.
As for closed stations, it’s simpler. NASA has already found a way to recycle almost all of the water used by American astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The agency recovers, among other things, the crew’s sweat and urine to transform it into drinking water. This takes the form, on the one hand, of a water recovery system and, on the other hand, of a treatment solution to make it perfectly drinkable. Particularly sophisticated dehumidifiers capture the humidity released into the cabin air by the crew’s breathing and sweat. Another subsystem recovers water from urine. Distilling the whole thing produces recoverable and drinkable water.
Every day, each astronaut needs about four liters of water, whether for drinking, cooking or even washing. This research is therefore fundamental in the evaluation of the survival systems of future (very) long-duration space missions.