Design of the Brine Evaporation Bag for Increased Water Recovery in Microgravity

The existing water recovery system on the International Space Station (ISS) is limited to 75% reclamation; consequently, long duration space missions are currently unfeasible due to the large quantity of water necessary to sustain the crew. The Brine Evaporation Bag (BEB) is a proposed system to supplement the existing water recovery system aboard the ISS that can to increase water recovery to 99%. The largest barrier to high water recovery is mineral scaling inside the water recovery equipment, which leads to equipment failure; therefore, some water must remain to keep the minerals dissolved. This waste stream is liquid brine containing salts, acids, organics, and water. The BEB is designed to recover this remaining water while protecting the equipment from scale. The BEB consists of a sealed bag containing a hydrophobic membrane that allows water vapor and gas to pass through. It is operated under vacuum, heated, and continuously filled with brine to boil away the water. The water vapor is recovered and the solids are contained inside the bag for disposal. The BEB can dry the brine to a solid block. Ongoing work includes improving the design of the BEB and the evaporator to prevent leaks, maximize the rate of water removal, and minimize energy use and weight. Additional testing will determine whether designs are heat- or mass-transfer limited and the optimal water recovery rate

Standardizing Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stromal Cells for Translation to Clinical Use: Selection of GMP-Compliant Medium and a Simplified Isolation Method

Citation: Smith, J. R., Pfeifer, K., Petry, F., Powell, N., Delzeit, J., & Weiss, M. L. (2016). Standardizing Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stromal Cells for Translation to Clinical Use: Selection of GMP-Compliant Medium and a Simplified Isolation Method. Stem Cells International, 14. doi:10.1155/2016/6810980Umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stromal cells (UC-MSCs) are a focus for clinical translation but standardized methods for isolation and expansion are lacking. Previously we published isolation and expansion methods for UC-MSCs which presented challenges when considering good manufacturing practices (GMP) for clinical translation. Here, a new and more standardized method for isolation and expansion of UC-MSCs is described. The new method eliminates dissection of blood vessels and uses a closed-vessel dissociation following enzymatic digestion which reduces contamination risk and manipulation time. The new method produced >10 times more cells per cm of UC than our previous method. When biographical variables were compared, more UC-MSCs per gram were isolated after vaginal birth compared to Caesarian-section births, an unexpected result. UC-MSCs were expanded in medium enriched with 2%, 5%, or 10% pooled human platelet lysate (HPL) eliminating the xenogeneic serum components. When the HPL concentrations were compared, media supplemented with 10% HPL had the highest growth rate, smallest cells, and the most viable cells at passage. UC-MSCs grown in 10% HPL had surface marker expression typical of MSCs, high colony forming efficiency, and could undergo trilineage differentiation. The new protocol standardizes manufacturing of UC-MSCs and enables clinical translation

Evaluation of Brine Processing Technologies for Spacecraft Wastewater

Brine drying systems may be used in spaceflight. There are several advantages to using brine processing technologies for long-duration human missions including a reduction in resupply requirements and achieving high water recovery ratios. The objective of this project was to evaluate four technologies for the drying of spacecraft water recycling system brine byproducts. The technologies tested were NASA's Forward Osmosis Brine Drying (FOBD), Paragon's Ionomer Water Processor (IWP), NASA's Brine Evaporation Bag (BEB) System, and UMPQUA's Ultrasonic Brine Dewatering System (UBDS). The purpose of this work was to evaluate the hardware using feed streams composed of brines similar to those generated on board the International Space Station (ISS) and future exploration missions. The brine formulations used for testing were the ISS Alternate Pretreatment and Solution 2 (Alt Pretreat). The brines were generated using the Wiped-film Rotating-disk (WFRD) evaporator, which is a vapor compression distillation system that is used to simulate the function of the ISS Urine Processor Assembly (UPA). Each system was evaluated based on the results from testing and Equivalent System Mass (ESM) calculations. A Quality Function Deployment (QFD) matrix was also developed as a method to compare the different technologies based on customer and engineering requirements

Research priorities for global food security under extreme events

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The Structure of Ice Nanoclusters and Thin-films of Water Ice: Implications for Icy Grains in Cold Molecular Clouds

The cubic to hexagonal phase transformation in water ice (I(sub c) yields I(sub h)) is used to measure the extent to which surface structure and impurities control bulk properties. In pure crystalline (I(sub c)) water ice nanoclusters and in thin-films of impure water ice, I(sub c) yields I(sub h) occurs at lower temperatures than in thin-films of pure water ice. The disordered surface of the 20 nm diameter nanoclusters promotes transformations or reactions which would otherwise be kinetically hindered. Likewise, impurities such as methanol introduce defects into the ice network, thereby allowing sluggish structural transitions to proceed. Such surface-related phenomena play an important role in promoting chemical reactions on interstellar ice grains within cold molecular clouds, where the first organic compounds are formed

A Novel Catalyst Deposition Technique for the Growth of Carbon Nanotubes

This viewgraph presentation provides information on the development of a technique at NASA's Ames Research Center by which carbon nanotubes (NT) can be grown. The project had several goals which included: 1) scaleability, 2) ability to control single wall nanotube (SWNT) and multiwall nanotube (MWNT) formation, 3) ability to control the density of nanotubes as they grow, 4) ability to apply standard masking techniques for NT patterning. Information regarding the growth technique includes its use of a catalyst deposition process. SWNTs of varying thicknesses can be grown by changing the catalyst composition. Demonstrations are given of various methods of masking including the use of transmission electron microscopic (TEM) grids

Costs of cold acclimation on survival and reproductive behavior in Drosophila melanogaster.

Fitness is determined by the ability of an organism to both survive and reproduce; however, the mechanisms that lead to increased survival may not have the same effect on reproductive success. We used nineteen natural Drosophila melanogaster genotypes from the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel to determine if adaptive plasticity following short-term acclimation through rapid cold-hardening (RCH) affects mating behavior and mating success. We confirmed that exposure to the acclimation temperature is beneficial to survival following cold stress; however, we found that this same acclimation temperature exposure led to less efficient male courtship and a significant decrease in the likelihood of mating. Cold tolerance and the capacity to respond plastically to cold stress were not correlated with mating behavior following acclimation, suggesting that the genetic control of the physiological effects of the cold temperature exposure likely differ between survival and behavioral responses. We also tested whether the exposure of males to the acclimation temperature influenced courtship song. This exposure again significantly increased courtship duration; however, courtship song was unchanged. These results illustrate costs of short-term acclimation on survival and reproductive components of fitness and demonstrate the pronounced effect that short-term thermal environment shifts can have on reproductive success