Publication: Biowaste recycling strategies for regenerative life support system: An overview
Date
01-10-2022
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Abstract
Space missions are expanding their horizons towards green energy. At the same time humans are expanding their invasion beyond the earth's orbit and envisage to have a habitat on other planets like Mars. This is possible only when there is a continuous efflux of human biowaste and influx of vital and breathable air, food and water for the habitants. The current scenario of space toilets is limited to recycling of human urine to drinkable water by refluxing the human liquid waste via Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) in a closed loop. On the offset, the human biowaste is thrown in space adding into space waste leading to another causes of concern for the space environment. To add up if human biowaste is recycled via photosynthetic microalgal microbial fuel cell integrated into MELiSSA project, it would be very useful since not only the microalgae will assimilate CO2 exhaled by crew members but also give O2 and edible biomass for their survival in the spacecraft. Simultaneously, this might reduce the payload during space voyage. The novelty of cultivating microalgae in spacecrafts for bioregenerative life support lies in further cultivating microalgae in Mars for its terraformation to planet Earth.
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Human biowaste, MELiSSA, Microalgae, Photosynthetic algal microbial fuel cell, Space