MAINSTREAM ENGINEERING CORP — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: H4

Description

Carbon dioxide and moisture removal is critical for maintaining the sustained and efficient operation in extravehicular exploration. Stable and high performance, low pressure drop CO2 and moisture removal sorbents are therefore a critical part of the space suit life support system and there is a need for alternative high performance adsorbent systems. Mainstream proposes to integrate highly tailorable metal organic frame work molecules (MOFs) which provide a highly selective, high-capacity carbon dioxide and water vapor absorbent levels into the vacuum swing CO2 absorbent system. Since MOFs are however impractical to integrate directly in a low pressure drop system, Mainstream will fabricate the MOFs into a high stability, high porosity polymeric beads with readily controllable sizes. Our process forming the beads allows full access to their extraordinarily high surface area and gas storage capacity, while allowing the integration into a low pressure drop packed bed adsorbent cartridge. Thus, they can be readily integrated into the adsorbent bed as a drop-in replacement for the current adsorbents.