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NASA NTRS2022

Trash-to-Gas: Trash Preparation and Feed Mechanism

One method of reducing the mass and volume of astronaut waste items during future exploration missions is a process called Trash-to-Gas (TtG), which uses thermal degradation to convert various astronaut waste items into a gas that can either be repurposed onboard or safely vented overboard. This project aims to determine which methods for pre-processing waste may enhance the gasification efficiency within a microgravity TtG reactor. Preparation methods that were investigated include mixing, pre-drying, shredding, compacting, and raw unprocessed waste. Each of these preparation methods was tested within the state-of-the-art subscale TtG system, known as the Orbital Syngas/Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR), and the resulting solid-to-gas conversion and burn durations were compared. Full-scale CAD models of these various preparation methods in conjunction with a projected full-scale TtG reactor were created using Creo Parametric. An Equivalent System Mass (ESM) analysis was then performed to trade the benefits of improved solid-to-gas performance with the costs associated with implementing the additional components that would increase system mass, power, volume, and design complexity. The results of this ESM analysis will be leveraged for future full-scale TtG system development to help reduce the overall mass, power, and volume of the system while ensuring effective reactor performance.

Ray Pitts↗

NASA NTRS2013

Trash to Gas: Converting Space Trash into Useful Products

NASA's Logistical Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project is a collaborative effort in which NASA is determined to reduce total logistical mass through reduction, reuse and recycling of various wastes and components of long duration space missions and habitats. LRR is focusing on four distinct advanced areas of study: Advanced Clothing System, Logistics-to-Living, Heat Melt Compactor and Trash to Supply Gas (TtSG). The objective of TtSG is to develop technologies that convert material waste, human waste and food waste into high-value products. High-value products include life support oxygen and water, rocket fuels, raw material production feedstocks, and other energy sources. There are multiple pathways for converting waste to products involving single or multi-step processes. This paper discusses thermal oxidation methods of converting waste to methane. Different wastes, including food, food packaging, Maximum Absorbent Garments (MAGs), human waste simulants, and cotton washcloths have been evaluated in a thermal degradation reactor under conditions promoting pyrolysis, gasification or incineration. The goal was to evaluate the degradation processes at varying temperatures and ramp cycles and to maximize production of desirable products and minimize high molecular weight hydrocarbon (tar) production. Catalytic cracking was also evaluated to minimize tar production. The quantities of C02, CO, CH4, and H20 were measured under the different thermal degradation conditions. The conversion efficiencies of these products were used to determine the best methods for producing desired products.

Trash-to-Gas↗

NASA NTRS2013

Trash-to-Gas: Converting Space Trash into Useful Products

NASA's Logistical Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project is a collaborative effort in which NASA is determined to reduce total logistical mass through reduction, reuse and recycling of various wastes and components of long duration space missions and habitats. LRR is focusing on four distinct advanced areas of study: Advanced Clothing System, Logistics-to-Living, Heat Melt Compactor and Trash to Supply Gas (TtSG). The objective of TtSG is to develop technologies that convert material waste, human waste and food waste into high-value products. High-value products include life support oxygen and water, rocket fuels, raw material production feedstocks, and other energy sources. There are multiple pathways for converting waste to products involving single or multi-step processes. This paper discusses thermal oxidation methods of converting waste to methane. Different wastes, including food, food packaging, Maximum Absorbent Garments (MAGs), human waste simulants, and cotton washcloths have been evaluated in a thermal degradation reactor under conditions promoting pyrolysis, gasification or incineration. The goal was to evaluate the degradation processes at varying temperatures and ramp cycles and to maximize production of desirable products and minimize high molecular weight hydrocarbon (tar) production. Catalytic cracking was also evaluated to minimize tar production. The quantities of CO2, CO, CH4, and H2O were measured under the different thermal degradation conditions. The conversion efficiencies of these products were used to determine the best methods for producing desired products.

Caraccio, Anne J.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Investigating Waste Preparation Methods for Trash-to-Gas Technologies

Trash-to-Gas technologies show promise in addressing the need for a proper waste management system onboard a long-duration space mission. However, there is a clear need to better understand how the initial waste preparation can affect the overall conversion efficiency. Factors such as the waste size, moisture content, and packing density can have significant impacts on the reactor performance. This paper will focus on the effects of various pre-processing steps on the overall solid-to-gas conversion on the state of the art Trash-to-Gas system developed at NASA Kennedy Space Center. These results will help inform future Trash-to-Gas technologies on what types of supporting subsystems will be necessary to operate effectively for exploration missions.

Trash to Gas↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Investigating Waste Preparation Methods for Trash-to-Gas Technologies

Trash to Gas↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Benefits of Trash-to-Gas Versus Jettison of Waste Via Trash-Lock for Mars Transit

Human exploration missions to Mars pose difficulties due to the significant waste that will be generated during transit, which will need to be carried along or disposed of in some fashion. Waste removal from the spacecraft decreases the spacecraft’s mass as well as the associated logistic items necessary for storing the waste. A mission propellant analysis was performed to highlight the mass benefits that may be accessed via waste removal. The propellant mass savings were determined for different waste removal rates (2.9 – 11.6 kg/day) with the highest removal rate leading to the greatest propellant savings of 7,785 kg for an 850-day round-trip mission. Due to these benefits, two methods for waste reduction were studied for the 850-day Mars mission: Trash-to-Gas (TtG) and physical jettison via a trash-lock. The trash-to-gas methods considered were combustion, steam reforming, and pyrolysis, which convert waste into ventable gases (e.g., CO2, CO, CH4, etc.). Combustion and steam reforming require a co-reactant (O2 and/or H2O). Therefore, additional processing units or integration with the spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) are required to facilitate recycle of the pertinent species. In contrast, pyrolysis is a purely thermal degradation process, which can operate as a standalone system; however, a lower percentage of waste is gasified with pyrolysis. The study herein compares standalone TtG (e.g., Advanced Organic Waste Gasifier, Plasma Pyrolysis, etc.), integrated TtG-ECLSS (e.g., Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, Incineration/Gasification, etc.), and physical jettison. Each system’s mass, volume, power, and cooling requirements were compared via an equivalent system mass (ESM) analysis to ascertain potentially promising technologies that can achieve efficient waste removal while minimizing their own spacecraft load. This study highlights the advantages and disadvantages of the different waste management technologies and provides recommendations on the promising technologies based on the ESM metric and propellant mass savings.

Jettison↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Suborbital Testing of the OSCAR Trash-to-Gas System

With the sustained human exploration of nearby celestial bodies on the horizon, a renewed outlook on crew waste management must be realized. Current waste management strategies aboard the International Space Station become impractical as we venture beyond low Earth orbit. Furthermore, for future exploration missions, extracting resources from various waste streams becomes increasingly advantageous. One method of combatting the long-duration waste management problem is by thermally degrading solid and liquid crew waste items into a chemically inert, ventable gas stream, a process known as Trash-to-Gas. The Orbital Syngas/Commodity Augmentation Reactor (OSCAR) is the state-of-the-art Trash-to-Gas system which has been designed to explore microgravity Trash-to-Gas concepts for improved mass/volume reduction and resource recovery from waste. OSCAR is a subscale testbed design that supports the NASA Logistics Reduction project under the Advanced Exploration Systems Program and Space Technology Mission Directorate Flight Opportunities Program to determine the feasibility of Trash-to-Gas technology for future use on long duration space missions. OSCAR has flown on two suborbital flight demonstrations aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle. This paper presents a high-level comparative analysis of these microgravity test campaigns with Earth gravity laboratory experiments. Solid-to-gas conversion, gas production & composition, and reactor temperature & pressure are compared to highlight the operational factors and performance differences within the microgravity environment for future optimization.

Ray P Pitts↗

NASA NTRS2013

Advanced Exploration Systems Logistics Reduction and Repurposing Trash-to-Gas and Heat Melt Compactor KSC

Topics covered: 1. Project Structure 2. "Trash to Gas" 3. "Smashing Trash! The Heat Melt Compactor" 4. "Heat Melt Compaction as an Effective Treatment for Eliminating Microorganisms from Solid Waste" Thermal degradation of trash reduces volume while creating water, carbon dioxide and ash. CO2 can be fed to Sabatier reactor for CH4 production to fuel LOX/LCH4 ascent vehicle. Optimal performance: HFWS, full temperature ramp to 500-600 C. Tar challenges exist. Catalysis: Dolomag did eliminate allene byproducts from the product stream. 2nd Gen Reactor Studies. Targeting power, mass, time efficiency. Gas separation, Catalysis to reduce tar formation. Microgravity effects. Downselect in August will determine where we should spend time optimizing the technology.

Caraccio, Anne J.↗

NASA NTRS2021

Trash Compaction and Processing System Trash Models and Evolved Gas Analysis of Trash Components

As part of the NASA Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS) program, the Generation 2 (Gen 2) Heat Melt Compactor (HMC) tests a variety of trash models (nominal, high liquid, and high cloth) in order to evaluate the technical risk associated with processing spacecraft trash. The trash components used in the trash models not only impacts the final solid trash disk quality, but also the water and gas effluent compositions. In order to better design an auxiliary system to treat the effluent streams, both the input trash components and the effluent must be characterized. Evolved gas analysis (EGA) methods are used to characterize the input trash components. The EGA results will be used to determine various HMC operational parameters, as well as to determine the optimal operation for the TCPS system.

Heat Melt Compactor↗

NASA NTRS2014

Trash to Gas (TtG) Simulant Analysis

Space exploration in outer earths orbit is a long-term commitment, where the reuse of discarded materials is a critical component for its success. The Logistics Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project under the NASA Advanced Exploration System Program is a project focused on technologies that reduce the amount of consumables that are needed to be sent into space, repurpose items sent to space, or convert wastes to commodities. In particular, Trash to Gas (TtG), part of the LRR project, is a novel space technology capable of converting raw elements from combustible waste including food waste and packaging, paper, wipes and towels, nitrile gloves, fecal matter, urine brine, maximum absorbency garments, and other organic wastes from human space exploration into useful gases. Trash to gas will ultimately reduce mission cost by producing a portion of important consumables in situ. This paper will discuss results of waste processing by steam reforming. Steam reforming is a thermochemical process developed as part of TtG, where waste is heated in the presence of oxygen and steam to produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane and water. The aim of this experiment is to investigate the processing of different waste simulants and their gaseous products. This will lay a foundation for understating and optimizing the production of useful gases for propulsion and recovery of water for life support.

Trash to Gas↗

NASA NTRS2024

Metal Extraction from Trash via Trash-to-Gas Processing for Use in 3D Printing

This work synergized state-of-the-art trash-to-gas (TtG) and in-space manufacturing (ISM) technologies to successfully extract metals from astronaut waste items for use in 3D printing. This was accomplished by isolating pure aluminum (Al 1235) from astronaut multilayer food packaging via TtG processing, cleaning the extracted aluminum, and preparing it for compatibility with the bound metal deposition (BMD) 3D printing process. A suite of material analyses was performed on the extracted aluminum product to fully characterize the key properties linked to effective additive manufacturing, including particle size distribution, oxygen content quantitation, and elemental composition. Metal extraction from Lunar and Martian regolith has become a significant area of interest for the in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) community to produce metallic equipment for various mission scenarios. However, the extraction of metals from astronaut waste streams has yet to be investigated. This project demonstrated an end-to-end waste metallic reuse process which may garner considerable metal production that would otherwise be disposed of.

Ray Pitts↗

NASA NTRS2014

Human Factor Investigation of Waste Processing System During the HI-SEAS 4 Month Mars Analog Mission in Support of NASA's Logistic Reduction and Repurposing Project: Trash to Gas

NASAs Logistics Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project is a collaborative effort in which NASA is tasked with reducing total logistical mass through reduction, reuse and recycling of various wastes and components of long duration space missions and habitats. Trash to Gas (TtG) is a sub task to LRR with efforts focused on development of a technology that converts wastes generated during long duration space missions into high-value products such as methane, water for life support, raw material production feedstocks, and other energy sources. The reuse of discarded materials is a critical component to reducing overall mission mass. The 120 day Hawaii Space Exploration and Analog Simulation provides a unique opportunity to answer questions regarding crew interface and system analysis for designing and developing future flight-like versions of a TtG system. This paper will discuss the human factors that would affect the design of a TtG or other waste processing systems. An overview of the habitat, utility usage, and waste storage and generation is given. Crew time spent preparing trash for TtG processing was recorded. Gas concentrations were measured near the waste storage locations and at other locations in the habitat. In parallel with the analog mission, experimental processing of waste materials in a TtG reactor was performed in order to evaluate performance with realistic waste materials.

Steam reformer↗

NASA NTRS2014

Human Factor Investigation of Waste Processing System During the HI-SEAS 4-month Mars Analog Mission in Support of NASA's Logistic Reduction and Repurposing Project: Trash to Gas

NASA's Logistics Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project is a collaborative effort in which NASA is tasked with reducing total logistical mass through reduction, reuse and recycling of various wastes and components of long duration space missions and habitats. Trash to Gas (TtG) is a sub task to LRR with efforts focused on development of a technology that converts wastes generated during long duration space missions into high-value products such as methane, water for life support, raw material production feedstocks, and other energy sources. The reuse of discarded materials is a critical component to reducing overall mission mass. The 120 day Hawaii Space Exploration and Analog Simulation provides a unique opportunity to answer questions regarding crew interface and system analysis for designing and developing future flight-like versions of a TtG system. This paper will discuss the human factors that would affect the design of a TtG or other waste processing systems. An overview of the habitat, utility usage, and waste storage and generation is given. Crew time spent preparing trash for TtG processing was recorded. Gas concentrations were measured near the waste storage locations and at other locations in the habitat. In parallel with the analog mission, experimental processing of waste materials in a TtG reactor was performed in order to evaluate performance with realistic waste materials.

waste management↗

NASA NTRS2014

Investigation of Bio-Regenerative Life Support and Trash-to-Gas Experiment on a 4-Month Mars Simulation Mission

Future crewed missions to other planets or deep space locations will require regenerative Life Support Systems (LSS) as well as recycling processes for mission waste. Constant resupply of many commodity materials will not be a sustainable option for deep space missions, nor will stowing trash on board a vehicle or at a lunar or Martian outpost. The habitable volume will decline as the volume of waste increases. A complete regenerative environmentally controlled life support system (ECLSS) on an extra-terrestrial outpost will likely include physico-chemical and biological technologies, such as bioreactors and greenhouse modules. Physico-chemical LSS do not enable food production and bio-regenerative LSS are not stable enough to be used alone in space. Mission waste that cannot be recycled into the bio-regenerative ECLSS can include excess food, food packaging, clothing, tape, urine and fecal waste. This waste will be sent to a system for converting the trash into high value products. Two crew members on a 120 day Mars analog simulation, in collaboration with Kennedy Space Centers (KSC) Trash to Gas (TtG) project investigated a semi-closed loop system that treated non-edible biomass and other logistical waste for volume reduction and conversion into useful commodities. The purpose of this study is to show how plant growth affects the amount of resources required by the habitat and how spent plant material can be recycled. Real-time data was sent to the reactor at KSC in Florida for replicating the analog mission waste for laboratory operation. This paper discusses the 120 day mission plant growth activity, logistical and plant waste management, power and water consumption effects of the plant and logistical waste, and potential energy conversion techniques using KSCs TtG technology.

Trash-to-Gas↗

NASA NTRS2014

Investigation of Bio-Regenerative Life Support and Trash-To-Gas Experiment on a 4 Month Mars Simulation Mission

Future crewed missions to other planets or deep space locations will require regenerative Life Support Systems (LSS) as well as recycling processes for mission waste. Constant resupply of many commodity materials will not be a sustainable option for deep space missions, nor will storing trash on board a vehicle or at a lunar or Martian outpost. The habitable volume will decline as the volume of waste increases. A complete regenerative environmentally controlled life support system (ECLSS) on an extra-terrestrial outpost will likely include physico-chemical and biological technologies, such as bioreactors and greenhouse modules. Physico-chemical LSS do not enable food production and bio-regenerative LSS are not stable enough to be used alone in space. Mission waste that cannot be recycled into the bio-regenerative ECLSS can include excess food, food packaging, clothing, tape, urine and fecal waste. This waste will be sent to a system for converting the trash into the high value products. Two crew members on a 120 day Mars analog simulation, in collaboration with Kennedy Space Centers (KSC) Trash to Gas (TtG) project investigated a semi-closed loop system that treated non-edible biomass and other logistical waste for volume reduction and conversion into useful commodities. The purposes of this study are to show the how plant growth affects the amount of resources required by the habitat and how spent plant material can be recycled. Real-time data was sent to the reactor at KSC in Florida for replicating the analog mission waste for laboratory operation. This paper discusses the 120 day mission plant growth activity, logistical and plant waste management, power and water consumption effects of the plant and logistical waste, and potential energy conversion techniques using KSCs TtG reactor technology.

trash to gas↗

NASA NTRS2013

Trash-to-Gas: Using Waste Products to Minimize Logistical Mass During Long Duration Space Missions

Just as waste-to-energy processes utilizing municipal landftll and biomass wastes are finding increased terrestrial uses, the Trash-to-Gas (TtG) project seeks to convert waste generated during spaceflight into high value commodities. These include methane for propulsion and water for life support in addition to a variety of other gasses. TtG is part of the Logistic Reduction and Repurposing (LRR) project under the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems Program. The LRR project will enable a largely mission-independent approach to minimize logistics contributions to total mission architecture mass. LRR includes technologies that reduce the amount of consumables that need to be sent to space, repurpose items sent to space, or convert wastes to commodities. Currently, waste generated on the International Space Station is stored inside a logistic module which is de-orbited into Earth's atmosphere for destruction. The waste consists of food packaging, food, clothing and other items. This paper will discuss current results on incineration as a waste processing method. Incineration is part of a two step process to produce methane from waste: first the waste is converted to carbon oxides; second, the carbon oxides are fed to a Sabatier reactor where they are converted to methane. The quantities of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and water were measured under the different thermal degradation conditions. The overall carbon conversion efficiency and water recovery are discussed.

Hintze, Paul. E.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Trash-to-Gas: Using Waste Products to Minimize Logistical Mass During Long Duration Space Missions

Hintze, Paul E.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

End of Summer Presentation Trash-to Gas and other ISRU Work

Jackson Smith Pathways First Rotation Projects

ISRU↗