Description: In this Phase II SBIR, XploSafe will build on its Phase I work to advance the development and evaluation of sorbents identified during the Phase I. Phase I results demonstrated the feasibility of sorbent candidates as viable replacement for the current carbon dioxide and humidity control solution. The developed materials exhibit significant advantages including higher CO2 capacity and easier regeneration under vacuum. For Phase II, XploSafe will further investigate physical properties as it is related to specific NASA requirements, expand experimental measurements of the capacity and kinetics for the sorption of carbon dioxide and humidity and vacuum regeneration, and develop and verify sorbent performance integration into the xEMU RCA unit. The researchers will focus on developing sorbents with long operational life and reduced or ideally eliminated outgassing of undesired contaminates such as ammonia. A targeted goal will be to use regeneration and potentially a larger CO2 capacity per gram to reduce the required sorbent mass, with respect to SA9T, while also maintaining the CO2 and humidity control under operating conditions. A fully regenerable sorbent with no irreversible binding site and little outgassing, could also reduce both the RCA and TCC total mass by allowing smaller units with less sorbent mass. In Phase II, XploSafe will construct several testing apparatuses to simulate conditions that match the requirements of the xEMU in relation to the RCA unit. The testing apparatuses will enable evaluation of the sorbent media prior to being provided to NASA for possible on-site evaluations. Samples of the developed sorbent prototypes will be provided for formal review by NASA starting after month 12 followed by updated sorbent prototypes that will be available for periodic reviews, and the final sorbent material will be delivered at the end of the project.

Benefits: Successful development of the proposed technology will advance the state of the art in CO2 and humidity removal via a pressure swing adsorption system. As a part of the Exploration Portable Life Support System (xPLSS) and the Exploration Extra-vehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) units, the platform technology will advance the viability of NASA's crewed deep space exploration objectives.

Long service life CO2 scrubbers are desired in hospitals, clean rooms as well as industrial applications including mining and firefighting. Commercial demand arises from applications such as CO2 scrubbers in high altitude aerospace applications, recreational diving, submarines and rescue capsules.