The Continuous-fill Brine Evaporation Bag (BEB) System
Water recovery aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is limited to nominally 85% water recovery. This means that 15% of the water used is thrown away and needs to be resupplied. This equates to nominally300lbs of water per crew member per year needing to be resupplies to the ISS. The Brine Evaporation Bag (BEB) is a system capable of dewatering brine to near complete water recovery (99.9+% water recovered), thus eliminating the requirement of water resupply. For the ISS, where frequent resupply missions are possible, this resupply is “easily” done. However, as we look outwards into the universe and make plans to travel to the moon and Mars, this 300lbs/crew/year (nominally 2 tons of water for a 4-crew Mars mission) becomes an unacceptable requirement. With the BEB increasing the water recovery rate to 99.9%, this would reduce the resupply requirement to only 2lbs/crew/year, or 24lbs for the entire Mars mission. This would be a savings of nearly 2 tons of resupply needing to be sent to Mars.
