Purify the Air Supply

Has your time spent indoors increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide? Your challenge is to use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to monitor and/or purify indoor air. It is entirely up to you whether the system you design is able to be used on Earth (for example in homes, businesses, transportation, etc.) and/or in space.

AN ORBITING THERMAL ELECTRIC GENERATOR International space station POWER STATION

Summary

This “power station” is theoretically supposed to generate electricity from the solar windIn other words, this module is fundamentally a (TEG), a device that turns heat difference into electricity and a form of electricity storage to with some wireless charging capabilities, as for the wireless charging part it is achieved through making the current flow through a coil generating a fluctuating magnetic field which then is able to transport electric current to another coil in the ISS.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We rephrased this question into “how does more current result in a more efficient air purification process, and through some intensive research, we found the answer. Through “Electrolysis” as some NASA resources stated, a large portion of the ISS oxygen comes from the electrolysis of water, but water isn’t a perfect solution, for example,it is not that compressible which means more space is needed to transport it that is why more energy will provide a higher voltage, ergo, the ability to electrolysis a wider variety of compounds or even bigger quantities of water.

How We Developed This Project

We shouldn’t take air for granted just because of its abundance on Earth, and in that sense, we tried to figure out a way to make the space more tamable and through research, we decided that more energy is the key to more purified air in space.

NASA’s and the ESA’s data were a huge help in theorizing this module, it made us aware of the current technologies and the ways air is already produced in space, which our idea stems from, also it made us realize how vital air supply is there for inspiring us to find a way to produce more oxygen.

Tools:

 Blender: This 3D modeling and animating software was the most important tool in this project as it helped us visualize the module there for bringing it to life.

Adobe After effects: this 2D animation program was used to make all the labels and other effects that were added to the 3D animation.

Wix.com: a website that gave us the space to give more details about our project through a website.

Project Demo

https://mahamadtarak2.wixsite.com/website

https://youtu.be/PlGE3jaTB-s

Data & Resources

Life Support Systems:  This paper showed the cycle in which oxygen is produced which was very helpful and inspired the fundamental part of the project

Closing the Loop: Recycling Water and Air in Space

This paper helped us uncover the power sources of the ISS which gave us a better perspective on what energy generation is like in space

Environmental Control and
Life Support System (ECLSS)

This paper gave us an in depth view of the electrolysis process which helped us better understand the oxygen production process

Breathing Easy on the Space Station: this paper/blog helped us by letting us know all the resources The ISS gets its oxygen therefor giving us options for the project.

NASA Spinoffs: Home Air Purifiers Eradicate Harmful Pathogens: this one gave us an insight on what air purification means, in other words it made us realizing that producing more oxygen means more purified air not only killing pathogens in the air

Links not related to nasa or the ESA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX2cU27kUUc&t=7s this video helped us greatly in understanding the TEG and how it generates electricity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seebeck_coefficient this page helped us pin point the properties needed in the used materials while also giving us some examples

Tags
#Air Quality #Reach to the space #Oxygen and life in the space #ISS #TEG #Human in the space
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.