Casey Wade
The Ohio State University
As future human space missions extend beyond low Earth orbit, more reliable and efficient technologies will be needed to maintain habitable atmospheres within spacecraft and extra-terrestrial habitats. Carbon dioxide becomes detrimental to human health at concentrations above 2630 ppm, making its remediation an important task of Atmosphere Revitalization Systems (ARS). The proposed research seeks to use a biomimetic approach to develop porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as next generation adsorbents for CO2 removal from life-supporting atmospheres. Carbonic anhydrases (CA) catalyze the hydration of carbon dioxide to bicarbonate at rates approaching one million per second. The active sites responsible for this fast chemical reaction contain tetrahedral zinc ions bearing terminal hydroxide ligands. We will investigate the synthesis and design of MOFs that mimic the structural and functional features of CA active sites to achieve fast and selective CO2 capture from ambient air. Structure-function and composition-function relationships will be examined to optimize the selectivity, stability, and regeneration requirements of the new MOF adsorbents for application in the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) of the Atmosphere Revitalization Systems (ARS) in NASA spacecraft.