Next Generation Capacitive Deionization Water Recycling Systems for use on Space Vehicles

Atlantis Technologies has developed a super capacitor based low energy, fouling resistant desalination technology called Radial Deionization (RDI) that can generate clean drinking water and concentrated brine from severely impaired waste water. Because of the extremely low energy footprint, it can be used in spacecraft wastewater recycling systems to separate salt, chromium, ions, and other contaminants. The system operates on DC voltage and is ideal for solar based power platforms. This paper will discuss the next generation system which is projected to be less than 1/10 the energy of current systems, or less than 0.2 kW*hr/m of clean water processing 3,000 ppm feed. Clean water recovery of system is expected to exceed 95% and weight reduced by a factor of 2. The base RDI technology is capable of removing difficult species such as all dissolved chromium species and other heavy metals and low solubility calcium salts such as sulfates and carbonates. It is also capable of tolerating contaminats such as urea, dimethyl trimethyl polysiloxane, and other organics.