(124d) Hollow Fiber Membranes for Indoor Air Cleaning to Spacesuit Water Cooling Application

Hollow fiber membranes have found wide applications in water and gas separations area. Water applications have included RO pretreatment, MBR, Membrane distillation, etc. Microfiltration type HF membranes also provide immense benefit in removing aerosol (such as, viral particles) and nanoparticles from enclosed space. Hydrophobic HF membranes have been extensively evaluated for desalination involving membrane distillation. One can potentially use this concept, for water cooling also using VMD principle and smaller pore size HF membranes preventing water infiltration in pores, such as for spacesuit application in Mars or Moon. This presentation will include two areas: (1) Viral particles separation in enclosed space, (2) HF PP membrane water cooling using VMD principle. (1) Reduction of airborne viral particles in enclosed spaces is critical in controlling pandemics. Three different hollow fiber membrane (HFM) modules were investigated for viral aerosol separation in enclosed spaces. Particle removal efficiency was characterized using aerosols generated by collision atomizer from a defined mixture of synthetic nanoparticles including SARS-CoV-2-mimics (protein-coated 100 nm polystyrene). (2) In contrast to various VMD publications, which are mainly explored for water desalination, this presentation will show the science of membrane-based cooling of water. The fundamental mass and heat transfer equations based model is used to evaluate the effect of membrane structure parameter, porosity, pore diameter and tortuosity on heat rejection, temperature drop and lumen side pressure drop. This is relevant to the design of innovative devices like NASA’s hollow fiber-based Spacesuit Water Membrane Evaporator (SWME). It is designed to reject the heat generated by the crew member wearing the suit and the electrical components of the suit’s portable life support subsystem. We acknowledge the technical contributions of Dr. Morgan Abney, NASA Langley Research Center. The research is funded by NIH-NIEHS, and NASA.