IES proposes an innovative Closed-cycle Ozone Laundry (COLS) washing process to support on-board space crew apparel cleaning needs, NASA SBIR technical subtopic 12.06. The ozonated water provides excellent cleaning and can be fully recycled for reuse by the laundry system. The objective of this project is to determine the feasibility of the COLS for application to the Space Station. This will be accomplished in four tasks: 1) A hardware concept for a Space Station laundry will be developed; 2) Space crew apparel will be washed in an ozonated water process to show acceptable cleaning; 3) A set of analyses will be performed on this concept to determine its ability to meet NASA laundry requirements including meeting all Space Station interfaces; and 4) Design a COLS Phase II prototype and write a test plan. We anticipate the results of these task will show COLS to be suitable for use on the Space Station. With a COLS NASA will be able to reduce the weight of providing clean space crew apparel by several thousand pounds over the life of the Space Station. COLS is also one technology enabling a long duration mission to Mars.Closed-cycle ozone cleaning technologies will allow the development of more competitive cleaning and remediation systems which can be applied to wide range of markets, including:* Laundry in hotels, prisons, rest homes and hospitals;* Water remediation of black water, gray water, life support,waste stream/water treatment;* Paper pulp whitener and color removal;* Soil remediation with removal of oil, fuels(JP5, JP4), etc.* Specialized laundry such as cleaning nuclear and chemical protection suits;* Support of self-supporting housekeeping systems, e.g. village closed loop water system (galley, shower, toilet);* Biocidal cleaning for agriculture vegetable and fruit, microbial and viral contaminants removal, fleas, pools/spa's, poultry, meat decontamination;* Medical cleaning of surgical equipment, non-allergeniccleaning, soapless disinfecting;* Bulk textile cleaning;* Surface cleaning for hi-tech industries, e.g., semiconductor wafers glass, quartz, mica, sapphire, ceramic, metals, silicon, gallium arsenide.
Keywords: Phase_I, NASA, Abstract, FY94
