I need help - supplies and consumables for Space Orbinomics

[tblaxland]

What is the average duration of a LED like that?
How many do we need to emulate sunlight?

Typical operating life is around 50,000 hours for the high output/high efficacy (1W) LEDs.

Sunlight typically produces an illumination of about 10,000 lux on an overcast day and between 50,000 and 100,000 lux on a sunny day. Not all of the light produced by the LEDs reach the plane of the plants, some is absorbed by the walls, ceiling etc but it would be reasonable to expect a utilisation factor about 0.7. For one square meter of plant bed, you need 10,000/0.7 = approx 14,300 lumens output from your LEDs. If you assume 100 lm/W, you need 143 LEDs at 1W each, ie, 143W/sqm. The LEDs currently run at about $100/W. For a building, the installed cost would be about double that and I guessing it would be about 10 times that for a spacecraft, say $143,000 for one square meter of planting.

There is some interesting stuff here on how much land you would need to grow all your food:
http://thesietch.org/mysietch/greenspree/2007/07/17/self-sufficiency/

 

[ar81]

I have several questions that I need to solve for waste management in space orbinomics. Unfortunately all chemistry professors I ever had sucked.

1.How do I calculate mass that is required and produced after a chemical reaction?

For CO2 absorbers I have these reactions
LiOH-H2O + CO2 = Li2CO3 + O2
Li2O2 + CO2 = Li2CO3 + O2
KO2 + CO2 = KCO3 + O2

For electricity production
Biogas + heat = H2O + O2

2.I am getting Li2CO3, KCO3 as byproducts or reactions. Is there a good or practical use for such waste?

3.I estimated 787Kg of food per year. How much (percentage) of that will become solid human waste?

4.I came to think that human urine might be contained by a gel if no processing hardware is purchased for the vessel. I made a guess of 0.25Kg of gel for 1 Kg of urine. Is this guess appropriate? Such gel would be unloaded to base/station for processing after you pay a fee.

5.How much water (percentage) does human urine have? I ned that to estimate remaining mass of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

6.I estimated 0.05Kg of cleaning products used each day. Is it right?

7.What do you do with such cleaning products waste? Will you dump it to space (if it becomes gas) or will you store it? Can you recycle? How?

8.How much biogas can you produce with human solid waste? What is the chemical reaction (to estimate O2, CO2 and water being produced after reaction)? How much heat is produced in a digestion process that produces biogas?

9.I know that..
Fertilizer + Water + Soil + CO2 = Plant + O2
I need the mass proportions for that equation, to estimate food producton, since grains, fruits, roots are a percentage of weight of plant.

10.Humans need 82 kg of meat a year... How do you produce a synthesized substitute? I doubt you can freeze meat during a 4 year trip, so should you bring chicken onboard? I would need an "equation" for that too.

11.Digestion machine would have this equation
Human solid waste + O2 = Biogas + Heat + Fertilizer to grow plants
How much mass of each component should be involved in the equation?

12.I know that DGIV radiator is very small. I have several sources of heat in this process. Biogas combustion only will produce 53Kj/gr. Is there a use for that? Or should heat be radiated to space? If DGIV is not big enough, how do you radiate heat?

13.How much does it take to grow a plant?

14.What is the proportion of CO2 vs O2 in cabin atmosphere that is harmful for humans? How much O2 (in Kg) is contained inside DGIV crew compartments?

 

[n0mad23]

Does anyone know where the appendixes to High Frontiers are located? Several years ago, I stumbled across them on a NASA directory, but haven't been able to locate them recently.

Many of these very questions are addressed and answered in these documents. Some are obviously very outdated, but calorie needs, atmosphere requirements, etc. are all laid out in nice table form.

 

[JamesG]

4.I came to think that human urine might be contained by a gel if no processing hardware is purchased for the vessel. I made a guess of 0.25Kg of gel for 1 Kg of urine. Is this guess appropriate? Such gel would be unloaded to base/station for processing after you pay a fee.

5.How much water (percentage) does human urine have? I ned that to estimate remaining mass of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

Depends really, on the temp and the hydration level of the "source". I'd say anywhere between 75% to 90%.

Its pretty simple to extract the water from urine via distillation (boiling it off and filtering) or electrolisis. The remaining "urea" is an extremely good plant fertilizer. It would be worth its weight in gold to any space gardener.

13.How much does it take to grow a plant?

Depends on the species. Different plants react differently to micro gravity. Supposedly (from Russian experiments) strawberries love being weightless, but lettice hates it.
What is an interesting experiment you can try to get some first-hand knowledge is to grow some plants yourself in an indoor garden. Its fairly cheap if you use materials on hand and sunlight from windows, etc.
Best part is that you get to eat your data.

 

[ar81]

So it tells me that greenhouse should be rotating to create artificial gravity.
It would be CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture). It would use visible light plus some frequencies of ultraviolet. No infrared light.

A human produces between 1 and 2 kg of urine a day, which means that in one year you have almost a ton of urine. Without hygienizator you also would be creating a biohazard, so it seems that if you lack the hardware, you better dump it.

But if you have hardware, you can sell it. Urea has nitrogen, potassium and a third substance I do not remember, that are useful not only for agriculture but also for other industrial uses. Indeed potassium would be used to create KO2 that can be used to absorb CO2 in case lithium based components are depleted. So basically your urine would let you breath...

I already have the almost clean cycle that would minimize waste. I haven't found the perfectly clean process and some hardware is semifictional but possible, for the principle exists but not really such specific hardware.

My idea (I haven't implemented yet in the game, for I am working on finances part) is that you buy the hardware required for a clean process, so you not only reduce costs, but also you could make some extra money trading the clean product obtained from your waste. The most problematic waste is human waste.

In order to make things easier for player, so they can see benefits of a clean process, DGIV will have plenty of room for all the substances that you might need to purchase of a 4 year trip. So just imagine it, carrying 27.5 tons of weightless water (won't add to DGIV mass) for 5 people during 4 years, instead of recycling water by buying proper hardware. Water is very expensive in outer space...

Imagine yourself dumping 2 kg of water a day as urine into space, instead of using urea and sell its components at the base.

That's the concept I have. All the recycling process and CEA will be automated, depending on hardware available in the vessel. This simplifies the code for the game, and gives the idea of an advanced automation. It looks like I need to add non operatinng income to the accounting, since selling these goods is not ordinary revenue from your business.

 

[JamesG]

Urea has nitrogen, potassium and a third substance I do not remember...

Ammonia.

This kind of mission really requires, or favors really, a 2 part craft.
To borrow Apollo for a moment, your DG is your LEM and is optimized for carrying cargo and the stuff you want to carry down to the surface instead of all the life support and crew sustainment equipment needed for the voyage (and its alot).
Connected to this is a flattened cylindrical module (think Skylab) that is your "Command Module" that contains the recycling & life support equipment, bulk food and spares storage, etc at the center. The whole thing is spun up to produce artificial gravity at the rim where the crew's living and working stations are along with the hydroponic "flower beds". Surrounding this are the water tanks which also provide radiation shielding. On the back side of that are all the rest of the gas storage containers (air, fuel, etc). And finally a counter rotating boom for the Solar arrays, science sensors and high gain antennas so they don't have to whirl around with the rest of the ship.

But that is realistically speaking. For your sim, you could just have your virtual astronauts sit patiently in their launch chairs for 2 years sipping lattes and eating energy bars :beach: without them going absolutely batty.

 

[ar81]

This what I will use...

Urine =
82.5% Water
3% Nitrogen
3% Potassium
3% Other electrolites
0.5% Heavy metals (Copper: 65 / Zinc: 29% / Chromium: 4.8% / Lead: 1.2% )
8.5% (NH2)2CO

where
(NH2)2CO + H2O → CO2 + 2NH3

NH3 is ammonia which has the following uses (at the base, not simulated in the game)
-Nitric Acid
-Fertilizer
-Refrigeration - R717
-Neutralizer of Diesel engine emissions
-Disinfectant
-Fuel
-Use as a diesel / gasoline / petrol replacement

 

[dougkeenan]

Yes, we use Orbiter so we can learn about urine.

 

[Woo482]

thats why we play orbiter ? so We can learn about Urine

 

[ar81]

You will learn about the advantages of a clean process. How to turn waste into profit while turning harmful byproducts into clean and valuable materials. Most of people think that being "environmentalist" is some kind of childish attitute of anilenated idealists. It is not. You will discover that clean technologies brings you a benefit.

 

[dougkeenan]

No disrespect intended, it's just funny where Orbiter leads us sometimes. I'm trying to scale the Biosphere2 closed ecosystem up to Moonbase Alpha size, so your work has my respect! It's not an easy thing to manage waste, and people make a lot of it.

 

[JamesG]

Designing viable long term life support systems (including doing something with the pee) is one of the show stoppers of manned interplanetary travel. Its just as important as the propulsion hardware and orbital dynamics. There's no point in having the capability of sending people to far off places if you can't keep them alive long enough to get there (and back).

 

[ar81]

No disrespect intended, it's just funny where Orbiter leads us sometimes. I'm trying to scale the Biosphere2 closed ecosystem up to Moonbase Alpha size, so your work has my respect! It's not an easy thing to manage waste, and people make a lot of it.

Do not worry. It is ironically fun but real... You go to space, you produce urine, and that's something you have to deal with, so you learn something about it. You just can't export your waste to China or throw it down the drain in space, for you might need it...

 

[dougkeenan]

Would it make good propellant if heated up sufficiently?

 

[JamesG]

Would it make good propellant if heated up sufficiently?

Urine? Just like water if you can flash it into steam or plasma.

 

[ar81]

Hmmm... I have been investigating about lithium based substances... it does not look too harmless... I think a better way to absorb CO2 is needed.

 

[n0mad23]

Pablo,

This is really exciting! I think your moving into "reuse/recycle" is really an important aspect of your project.

Again, I need to emphasize - on the cosmic scale, biomass is incredibly rare. Once off our planet, we can find most of the metals we need, and probably most of the volatile gasses - but long chain carbon molecules?

I'm really excited with what you're doing here!

 

[JamesG]

Let plants do it. Either your veggies or algae/photoplankton scrubbers.

 

[ar81]

Let plants do it. Either your veggies or algae/photoplankton scrubbers.

I might need figures on the reaction that would occur with plants.

Pablo,
This is really exciting! I think your moving into "reuse/recycle" is really an important aspect of your project.
I'm really excited with what you're doing here!

It is not going to be a 100% accurate, for some of the ways things are being processed are based on "guesstimates", but the general process would be similar in real life. I am ignoring colateral processes like having accidents due to poor handling of corrosive lithium based substances, actions of biological agents, reactions to lack of weight, etc... So it is a very simplified model. Anyway you just want to care about how many supplies you need.

So basically you would be finding a balance by trial and error, since output depends on what recycling hardware you have purchased.

 

[JamesG]

I might need figures on the reaction that would occur with plants.

The BioSphere people would know. Maybe even the Mars society from their hab experiments.

All you'd really need to know is _X_ amount of biomass can take _Y_ amount of CO2 to produce _Z_ of O2. The rest can be fudged (like how much water is used and if you plants are going to grow out of control).