Comprehensive trade study of biological systems for primary treatment in an integrated water processing system

Biological processes offer an alternative approach to treatment of waste streams for water recycling during long term space missions. The combination of biological pretreatment with downstream physiochemical processes may be able to produce potable water at a lower equivalent system mass (ESM) compared to systems composed of only physiochemical processes. Several biological configurations exist for the removal of carbon and nitrogen. To date, no studies have comprehensively evaluated the relative ESM of each system. The configurations evaluated include: 1) membrane aerated biological reactor for simultaneous nitrification/denitrification, 2) membrane aerated biological reactor for nitrification in sequence with a packed-bed reactor for denitrification and organic carbon removal, 3) a pre-carbon oxidation reactor followed by a membrane aerated biologicalreactor for nitrification, and 4) an extended membrane aerated biological reactor for nitrification and aerobic carbon oxidation. We report on the systems, analysis and results including a detailed discussion of the inputs of the ESM analysis, methodology for determining reactor size and mass, and the implications of each system on downstream processing and reliability.